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 

WORKING GROUP MEETING 

ADVISORY BOARD ON 

RADIATION AND WORKER HEALTH 

NEVADA TEST SITE 

The verbatim transcript of the Working 

Group Meeting of the Advisory Board on Radiation and 

Worker Health held in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Oct. 

25, 2007. 

STEVEN RAY GREEN AND ASSOCIATES 

NATIONALLY CERTIFIED COURT REPORTERS 

404/733-6070 
2 

C O N T E N T S 

Oct. 25, 2007 

WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS 6 

DR. LEWIS WADE, DFO 

INTRODUCTION BY CHAIR 10 

MR. ROBERT PRESLEY 

MATRIX DISCUSSION: 

COMMENT 1: SOME RADIONUCLIDE LISTS NOT COMPLETE 11 

COMMENT 2: REACTOR TEST RE-ENTRY PERSONNEL 12 

COMMENT 3: HOT PARTICLE DOSES 12 

COMMENT 4: ORO-NASAL BREATHING 43 

COMMENT 5: MASS-LOADING APPROACH 58 

COMMENT 6: AVERAGE AIR CONCENTRATION VALUES 60 

COMMENT 7: RESUSPENSION DOSES 60 

COMMENT 8: EXTERNAL DOSE DATA FOR 1963-1966 66 

COMMENT 9: LACK OF ENVIRONMENTAL EXTERNAL DOSE DATA 

FOR 1968-1976 68 

COMMENT 10: PRE-1963 EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENTAL DOSE 68 

COMMENT 11: CORRECTION FACTORS FOR EXTERNAL 

ENVIRONMENTAL DOSE 71 

COMMENT 12: RADON DOSES IN G-TUNNEL; GRAVEL GERTIE RADON

DOSES 82 

COMMENT 13: ENVIRONMENTAL DOSES DUE TO I-131 VENTING83 

COMMENT 14: INTERNAL DOSE FOR THE PRE-1967 86 

COMMENT 15: RESUSPENSION OF RADIONUCLIDES 89 

COMMENT 16: USE OF PHOTON DOSE 89 

COMMENT 17: INGESTION DOSES NEED BETTER EVALUATION 93 

COMMENT 18: OTIB-0002 FOR POST-1971 

TUNNEL RE-ENTRY WORKERS 94 

COMMENT 19: PRE-1966 BETA DOSE 99 

COMMENT 20: INTENTIONAL NON-USE OF BADGES 126 

COMMENT 21: EXTREMITY DOSIMETRY 164 

COMMENT 22: NO NEUTRON DOSE DATA UNTIL 1966 171 

COMMENT 23: SOIL DATA FOR RESUSPENSION DOSES 191 

COMMENT 24: HIGH-FIRED OXIDES 193 

COMMENT 25: SITE EXPERT INTERVIEWS 195 

ACTION ITEMS 197 

MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS 206 

COURT REPORTER’S CERTIFICATE 222 
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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

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

(By Group, in Alphabetical Order) 

DESIGNATED FEDERAL OFFICIAL 

WADE, LEWIS, Ph.D.

Senior Science Advisor 

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 

Washington, DC 

MEMBERSHIP 

CLAWSON, Bradley

Senior Operator, Nuclear Fuel Handling 

Idaho National Engineering & Environmental Laboratory 

MUNN, Wanda I.

Senior Nuclear Engineer (Retired)

Richland, Washington 

PRESLEY, Robert W.

Special Projects Engineer

BWXT Y12 National Security Complex

Clinton, Tennessee 

ROESSLER, Genevieve S., Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus 

University of Florida

Elysian, Minnesota 

SCHOFIELD, Phillip

Los Alamos Project on Worker Safety

Los Alamos, New Mexico 
5 

IDENTIFIED PARTICIPANTS
 

ANSPAUGH, LYNN, SC&A

CHEW, MEL, ORAU

ELLIOTT, LARRY, NIOSH

HOWELL, EMILY, HHS

MAKHIJANI, ARJUN, SC&A

MAURO, JOHN, SC&A

NETON, JIM, NIOSH

RAFKY, MICHAEL, HHS

RICH, BRYCE, ORAU

ROLFES, MARK, NIOSH

ROLLINS, GENE, ORAU

SMITH, BILLY, ORAU

ZLOTNICKI, JOE, SC&A 
 

 

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P R O C E E D I N G S

 (9:00 a.m.) 

WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS 

DR. WADE: We’re going to begin. 

This is Lew Wade and as always I have 

the privilege of serving as the Designated 

Federal Official for the Advisory Board. And 

this is a meeting of a work group of the 

Advisory Board, particularly this is the work 

group looking at the Nevada Test Site site 

profile. That work group is chaired by Robert 

Presley, members Clawson, Munn, Roessler and 

Schofield, and I believe they’re all in the 

room. 

Let me begin by asking if there are 

any other Board members who are on the call by 

telephone. 

 (no response) 

 DR. WADE: Are there any other Board members 

on the call by telephone? 

 (no response) 

 DR. WADE: Good, the reason I asked that is 

that we really can’t have a quorum of the 

Board, and we don’t. We have five Board 
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members present; a quorum would be seven. 

So what I would suggest we do is go 

around the table and make our introductions, 

and those directly involved in the process 

please identify if you come to the table with 

a conflict. And then we’ll go out into 

telephone land and hear from those involved on 

the telephone, a little bit of phone etiquette 

discussion, and then we’ll begin our 

deliberations. 

This is Lew Wade. I work for NIOSH 

and support the Advisory Board. 

 MR. CLAWSON: Brad Clawson, Advisory Board 

member, no conflict. 

DR. ROESSLER: Gen Roessler, Advisory Board 

member, no conflict. 

MS. MUNN: Wanda Munn, Advisory Board 

member, no conflict. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Arjun Makhijani, SC&A, no 

conflict. 

MR. SCHOFIELD: Phillip Schofield, Board 

member, no conflict. 

MR. RICH: Bryce Rich, ORAU support, 

conflicted. 

MR. CHEW: Mel Chew, ORAU team, not 
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conflicted. 

MR. ROLFES: Mark Rolfes, NIOSH Health 

Physicist, no conflict. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Robert Presley, Board member, 

no conflict. 

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

 DR. WADE: Okay, let’s go out onto the 

telephone. Other members of the NIOSH or ORAU 

team, please identify yourself. 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): This is Gene 

Rollins. I am O-R-A-U team, not conflicted, 

and I’m the document owner. 

 DR. WADE: Thank you, Gene, welcome, we’re 

glad you’re with us. 

Other members? 

MR. SMITH (by Telephone): This is Billy 

Smith, Chew team, conflicted. 

 DR. WADE: Other NIOSH/ORAU team members? 

 (no response) 

 DR. WADE: How about SC&A team members? 

DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Yes, this is John 

Mauro, SC&A, no conflict. 

 DR. WADE: Other SC&A team members? 

MR. ZLOTNICKI (by Telephone): Joe 

Zlotnicki, SC&A, no conflicts. 
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 MR. PRESLEY: Can we have the name again, 

please? 

MR. ZLOTNICKI (by Telephone): Joe 

Zlotnicki, that’s Z-L-O-T-N-I-C-K-I. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: He’s one of our external 

dose experts. 

 DR. WADE: Welcome. 

Other members of the SC&A team? 

 (no response) 

 DR. WADE: How about workers, petitioners, 

or any of those fine people with us this 

morning? 

 (no response) 

 DR. WADE: Other federal employees who are 

on the call by virtue of their federal 

employment? 

MR. RAFKY (by Telephone): This is Michael 

Rafky with HHS. 

 DR. WADE: Welcome, Michael. 

Is there anyone else on the call who 

would like to be identified? 

 (no response) 

 DR. WADE: We have one new presence at the 

table. 

MS. HOWELL: Emily Howell, HHS. 
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 DR. WADE: And then very briefly because 

we’ve been doing very well on the telephone, 

but again, if you’re speaking, speak into a 

handset as opposed to a speaker phone. Mute 

whatever you can in your area if you’re not 

speaking, and be mindful of background noises. 

Though I must say the last three or four calls 

have been without flaw really, so thanks to 

all of you for that. 

Robert? 

INTRODUCTION BY CHAIR

 MR. PRESLEY: What I would like to do today 

if that’s acceptable to other working group 

members is we will work off of the matrix that 

Mark sent out on 10/17/07. It is a complete 

new matrix. Then when we get to an issue that 

involves SC&A and NIOSH’s response, we will 

pick the second one up that Mark sent out, and 

it has the SC&A comment, and it also has the 

NIOSH remark on it, and we will use that. And 

then once we finish that response up, we will 

go back to the original database and go 

through it. 

What that will do, I hope, is keep us 

from going through some of this stuff that 
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we’ve already done once. Is that acceptable 

to everybody? 

 (no response) 

 MR. PRESLEY: We’ve got some backup data 

that I have here. It’s also on your machine, 

if you can get online, and we will use it in 

our discussions for backup on some of these 

responses today. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: I didn’t understand that. 

 MR. PRESLEY: The documents that were sent 

out this past week or so on the interview with 

Bruce Church and some of the other stuff is 

what I’m talking about. 

Okay, everybody ready to start? 

Anybody have any questions? 

 (no response) 

COMMENT 1: SOME RADIONUCLIDE LISTS ARE NOT COMPLETE

 MR. PRESLEY: I’d like to start with Comment 

1, an old comment that says, “Some 

radionuclide lists are not complete.” We have 

worked this over. Things have been added, 

deleted, Table 2-8 has been removed from the 

TBD, and Table 2-3 and 5D-13 are not 

appropriate at this time. We’ve discussed 

this in our past meeting. We decided that the 
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review was complete for this, and that the 

working group would review when the total TBD 

comes out. Is that correct? 

DR. MAKHIJANI: I believe that that’s right. 

And you’ve published one of the TBDs, right? 

MR. ROLFES: That’s correct. The external 

dose TBD came out shortly before the last 

meeting. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Right. 

MR. ROLFES: And you had reviewed that. 

Also, the site description has been released 

as recent, and I did send that around to the 

working group members and SC&A. But 

additionally, the internal dose TBD is 

currently in review at OCAS so we should have 

that finalized relatively soon. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: And as I told you just 

before the meeting, I opened the site 

description revision but have done nothing 

with it. I have no instructions to do so. 

COMMENT 2: REACTOR TEST RE-ENTRY PERSONNEL 

COMMENT 3: HOT PARTICLE DOSES

 MR. PRESLEY: Comment 2 is the Technical 

Basis Document does not provide adequate 

guidance for dose estimates to the gonads, 
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skin, gastrointestinal tract for early reactor 

test re-entry personnel. Large hot-particle 

doses to the skin and the GI tract have not 

been evaluated. Naval Radiological Defense 

Laboratories (NRDL) documents and models have 

not been evaluated though one document is 

referenced. 

There are Findings 2; there’s an 

issues list. We have discussed this in the 

past. SC&A has a response regarding the NRDS. 

Arjun, do you want to go over you all’s 

response first? 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Basically, we agreed with 

part of NIOSH’s response. I think we have a 

common understanding that there were hot 

particles there, but we did not see in the 

revised external dose site profile was any 

evidence for the assertion whenever there were 

hot particles that measurements were actually 

made. 

So that was the main issue that was 

outstanding, both consolidated Comments 2 and 

3 in our response, because they’re the same 

response, Test Site as well as Reactor 

Development Station. And so we cited again 
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the report of the NRDL, the Naval Reactor 

Development Laboratory, that there were hot 

particles especially in that one test. 

Unfortunately, Lynn Anspaugh is not on 

the call. He might have not noticed that 

there is a call, and I didn’t send him an email about it. But he also kind of felt that 

the response was insufficient. And we had a 

whole team perform this review, and they are 

named in the review. I see there’s been an 

interview done. So that was the basic 

substance of the response that there was no 

evidence that measurements were actually made, 

that there was some systematic procedure in 

place throughout the period when there was 

vulnerability of hot particles. 

MR. ROLFES: In order to address --

Were you finished, Arjun? 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes. 

MR. ROLFES: In order to address the hotparticle exposure issue, we went back and did 

another records review, found several 

documents related to the Nuclear Reactor 

Development Test Station which had 

characterizations of hot particles that were 
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released. We spoke with a person who worked 

intimately in hot particle research and have 

provided the Advisory Board with a draft copy 

of his interview notes for your review. 

Furthermore, we have information for 

each of the reactor tests which includes betagamma dose rate surveys of some of the 

particles plus the dose rate information for 

these particles, information regarding gamma 

doses recorded on personnel dosimeters and 

discussion of neutron exposures as well. 

There’s also very detailed gamma dose rate 

surveys and neutron dose rate surveys. So 

there’s a lot of new information that I’ve 

recently taken a look at. 

Specific to the hot particles I’ll go 

ahead and read our response for this comment 

on hot particles. The information regarding 

the NRDS was not in the Rev. 1 of the TBD that 

SC&A was able to review. Rev. 1 was already 

under review at OCAS when Billy Smith provided 

a white paper on the NRDS report. 

When the Rev. 1 of the TBD was 

official, a page change revision of NRDS 

information was initiated, and it was combined 
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with the page change regarding the film 

dosimeter correction factor of 1.25 for the 

years 1960 to ’65. October 19th, 2007, the 

combined page change was returned to ORAU by 

OCAS with comments that are in the process of 

being resolved. 

The following is the statement in the 

publication record regarding the modified page 

change. This page change revision 

incorporates expanded coworker data on pages 

42, 43, 45, 46 and 47 in Section 6.4. Text 

was added to Section 6.5.1, page 58; Section 

6.5.2, page 59 in order to address the hotparticle issues. The use of the document, 

hazards to personnel re-entering the Nevada 

Test Site following nuclear reactor tests. An 

additional reference to the text was also 

added on page 42 as well as to the reference 

section on page 71. 

Furthermore, the records of the 

individual’s interview that we discussed, 

provided to the Advisory Board, he was a 

former NTS NRDS health physicist for DOE. And 

his expert account clearly demonstrates that 

the radiological monitoring, including these 
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contamination surveys, whole body counting, et 

cetera, frisking after working in a hot area, 

these methods were in place that would have 

easily detected hot particles. These were not 

casual areas, and stringent access control was 

in place at this time as well in order to 

minimize the exposures to personnel. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Mark, this was a little bit 

later in the period, right? This person, for 

instance, started sort of later on in the ‘60s 

from what I read in the interview. 

MR. ROLFES: He started there in early 1960, 

’61 time periods. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Oh, that’s not how I read 

the interview. 

 MR. PRESLEY: (Reading) From July ’61 to 

June ’62, I was employed with the U.S. Public 

Service, attended school in Utah where I did 

research measuring fall-out particles in milk 

and atmospheric testing. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Yeah, that’s not hot 

particles on site. As I read this, the 

employment history to be onsite associated 

with NRDS in the latter part of the ‘60s. 

Whereas Comments 2 and 3 go back to 1951. 
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MR. ROLFES: Okay, that’s correct. 

DR. ROESSLER: So he was not onsite until 

’66. Is that --

MR. ROLFES: Correct; however, he was, in 

fact, researching hot particles prior to that 

time, and these hot particles were associated 

with the nuclear reactor test itself. 

DR. ROESSLER: So his research involved the 

Nevada Test Site? 

MR. ROLFES: That’s right, yes. 

DR. ROESSLER: So when he talks, in his 

interview the thing that I felt was missing 

were dates that we could tie things to, and so 

what I’m assuming you’re saying then is that 

he was involved there from, with these issues, 

from ’61 to ’69. Is that --

MR. ROLFES: I’ll have to take a look at the 

interview here. 

DR. ROESSLER: It’s in the first question --

DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes, right, the fall-out 

particles in milk from atmospheric testing is 

a completely different issue. 

MR. ROLFES: Employed by the U.S. Public 

Health Service at Nevada Test Site from July 

of ’61 to June ’62, participated in research 
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projects measuring fall-out particles in milk 

from atmospheric testing. Earned a BS degree 

in molecular biology, radiobiology, a health 

physics degree at Colorado State --

MS. HOWELL: I’m sorry. Can I interrupt? 

Can we just be careful? I don’t have this in 

front of me, but this is a site expert, 

correct? 

MR. ROLFES: Correct. 

MS. HOWELL: So we need to be careful about 

sharing too much information so if you could 

avoid reading the entire thing into the record 

it would be helpful. 

MR. ROLFES: We did receive verbal 

permission from the individual to use his 

information, but --

MS. HOWELL: Right, but we still can’t... 

DR. ROESSLER: Later on in his interview on 

page six where Bryce Rich asked him a 

question, Bruce Church said when we started 

underground testing, 1961 to ’62, he’s 

speaking there as though he was onsite. 

MR. ROLFES: Yeah, the United States Public 

Health Service was, in fact, responsible for 

monitoring of tests offsite. They did some 
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onsite I believe. 

Is that correct, Mel? You did --

MR. CHEW: Yeah. 

MR. ROLFES: Okay, so personnel from the 

United States Public Health Service were, in 

fact, onsite, but they were more responsible 

for tracking effluents off the Nevada Test 

Site. 

MR. RICH: They were an integral part of the 

controls for the radiological --

 MR. PRESLEY: That’s exactly right. Each 

time that we had any type of a test, they were 

very much involved with the pre-testing and 

also the after the test. 

 MR. CLAWSON: This is Brad. Was this more 

for the downwinder or was this for basically 

on the site? Because, you know, at that same 

timeframe, this is when the whole downwind 

issue started coming about. And Bryce, 

correct me if I’m wrong, but I think a lot of 

this was pertaining to what was blowing off of 

the site. 

MR. ROLFES: Exactly. 

MR. RICH: It did both. They had the, they 

did onsite monitoring at the peripheries of 
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the site, but they were also focused on the 

off-site issues. But as part of the 

integrated control system that USPH and 

General Electric, the whole group was an 

integrated support. 

MS. MUNN: But obviously a great deal of 

attention was paid to weather conditions at 

the time of each event in an attempt to 

minimize any exposure both onsite and offsite. 

It’s very clear that they were going out of 

their way to try to make sure that weather 

conditions were not detrimental to either the 

employees or the general public. 

MR. ROLFES: Correct. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: My only point in this regard 

is it appears to me that until the late ‘60s, 

this person was primarily involved in offsite 

activities, and the way I read the NRDL 

documents from 1968 it seemed to me that they 

were directly involved in evaluating their own 

radiological information. And they had the 

personnel to do it. They produced all those 

documents. 

And I would imagine in regard to 

reactor testing that there might be experts 
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who might have direct knowledge of that period 

involved because since the SEC’s only for 

internal dose going back to 1951. I mean the 

question stretches back all the way to 1951 

and the reactor ^ what, in the late ‘50s? I 

don’t remember the date. 

So this is certainly a partial answer 

to that, to the comment in the white paper 

that we sent you, or the review that we sent 

you. This certainly responds partially to 

that, but I think only partially. 

MR. ROLFES: I did want to point out there 

is a clarification. One of the latest, I got 

a revised copy of his interview notes. He 

hadn’t had the opportunity to fully go through 

some of the things because he did give a quick 

overview of his notes. I do have some notes 

that are slightly different. I just want to 

clarify that he was, in fact, at the Nevada 

Test Site as a member of the U.S. Public 

Health Service in 1961. 

DR. ROESSLER: I think it adds a lot of 

credibility to his interview if we have those 

dates because it’s not really clear on what we 

got. Can we assume then that he was there and 
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involved in what he’s discussing covers the 

period from ’61 through ’69 when he left? 

MR. ROLFES: I would certainly believe so. 

I don’t know if he was there 100 percent of 

the time at the NRDS. We can certainly ask 

for a clarification from him. 

DR. NETON: I think we need to go back and 

verify that. 

 MR. PRESLEY: It plainly states right here 

that he was here 1961-1962. He was employed 

by the U.S. Public Health Service at the 

Nevada Test Site. 

MR. ROLFES: Gene or Billy --

 DR. WADE: Do you want me to make copies of 

that? Or is that copyable? 

MR. ROLFES: Yeah, I think we can make 

copies of this. 

MR. RICH: It doesn’t have the red 

highlights which indicate it has changes in 

the original. 

 DR. WADE: So why don’t we get that out to 

people? 

MR. RICH: The red doesn’t show. The 

comments are there. It just doesn’t show. 

MR. ROLFES: It does have underlying tracked 
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changes so if you’d like to make a copy of 

this then, thanks. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Mark, could you just e-mail 

it to me? 

MR. ROLFES: Certainly. 

Gene or Billy? 

MR. SMITH (by Telephone): Hi, you guys. 

MR. ROLFES: Do you recall if Bruce was 

continuously there at the Nevada Test Site 

during that time period? Could you go into a 

little bit more detail about his job functions 

as you recall, Billy or Gene, either of the 

two? 

MR. SMITH (by Telephone): Well -- this is 

Billy. I’m not sure about the exact dates of 

Bruce’s campaigns, various campaigns at the 

NRDS-slash-NTS, but he was with the Public 

Health Service and that he set up the Health 

Physics program that NRDS used. And then he 

went off to school, and then he came back and 

became the Radiological Programs Director for 

the Nevada Operations Office. 

But I’m not sure about the dates. We 

could ask Bruce to confirm those. I think you 

found the only changes that he had to his 
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original interview notes. But I’m not sure 

about the exact dates because that was prior 

to my start in 1966. 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): Mark, this is 

Gene Rollins. I’m looking right now at his 

revised, the ones that Bruce has made comments 

on. He made a couple of changes in here. And 

it appears that he says that he worked for the 

Public Health Service from ’61 to ’62. Then 

he went back and got his bachelors degree in 

molecular biology. And he said in the fall of 

1966, he was hired by Pan Am to run a 

radiological laboratory and developed and 

operated the Shadow Shield whole body counter 

at the Rocket Development Station. So it 

appears that his involvement with NRDS began, 

direct involvement with NRDS, according to 

what he’s written here, began in the fall of 

1966. 

MR. ROLFES: Well, we do have additional 

information as we indicated about hot 

particles. This information should be 

published in Rev. 1 of the, let’s see, the 

internal dose TBD, excuse me, the external 

dose TBD shortly. 
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DR. MAKHIJANI: And as you know, I mean, it 

wasn’t there in the version that we reviewed. 

MR. ROLFES: Right, it was a recent addition 

after, I guess after the last release. 

Did we want to go on to four, or are 

there other questions regarding two and three? 

MS. MUNN: Is there an action on this? 

 MR. PRESLEY: On two our action would be to 

review for completeness when we get the --

MS. MUNN: Rev. 1? 

 MR. PRESLEY: Yeah. 

DR. ROESSLER: What’s the -- until we review 

it then is there any charge to SC&A? 

 MR. PRESLEY: As far as I’m concerned, no. 

I don’t see anything unless you all do. I’m, 

you know, we’ve got the stuff on the hot 

particles has come in. I think SC&A is, are 

you satisfied with the comments that --

DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, as I said, we haven’t 

had time to review this, but on quick 

inspection it seems to be a partial response. 

And so there is a partial response and that’s 

about as much as I can say. And we haven’t 

seen the revision, of course. 

MS. MUNN: So are you going to review it and 
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be very clear on what portion of the response 

you don’t feel was adequate? 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, as I said, the hot 

particle issue goes back to 1951, and this 

person appears to have been involved from 1966 

onward. And so I don’t know when these 

procedures were in place, and when they were 

introduced and so on. So there’s still a gap 

in terms of what happened in the earlier 

period. 

MS. MUNN: I understand your point. I’m 

just asking will we have your point clarified 

in writing --

DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, if you want it 

clarified in writing, certainly, we can give 

it to you, but --

MS. MUNN: Once you’ve had an opportunity to 

see. 

 MR. PRESLEY: I think we ought to get that. 

Is there a consensus of the working group? I 

have no problem with that. 

MS. MUNN: I’d like to be very clear if 

there are any outstanding issues once you’ve 

taken a look at it. I’d like to be very clear 

on what those are by the time we meet next. 
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DR. MAKHIJANI: So we’ll be happy to send 

you a memorandum. 

 MR. PRESLEY: You could do that, send one 

out. We’ll get it to the working group. 

DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Robert, this is 

John Mauro, just a quick question. I’m 

listening in, and I heard that there now is a 

revised version of the TBD that explicitly 

addresses this issue and also that contain 

within that revised section is the material 

that we’re discussing related to white papers 

and these interview notes. 

I’m also hearing though where we’re 

being basically given authorization to look at 

this material that is part of a white paper 

and the other databases and perhaps close the 

loop as best we can. But we are not being 

asked to review the new, revised section of 

the TBD itself, the TBD that’s now on the web. 

 MR. PRESLEY: That’s correct. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Is it on the web? 

MR. ROLFES: The external dose Revision Zero 

is, in fact, on the web now. That was the 

version that you had reviewed that was 

released right before our previous Nevada Test 
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Site working group meeting. There is the 

Revision 1 which has been returned to ORAU 

now. These are just page changes that 

incorporate additional information about hot 

particles. 

So there were some internal comments 

from OCAS, and they were sent back to ORAU for 

resolution. So as soon as those comments are 

resolved, Revision 1 with page change 

information regarding hot particles will, in 

fact, be approved and placed onto the 

internet. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: I’m confused about all these 

revision numbers. Revision Zero was old from 

2004, and we reviewed Revision 1 from July 

2007. 

MR. ROLFES: Okay, I apologize. Revision 1 

recently had some page changes. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: So is the instruction then 

that we should review those page changes which 

relate to hot particles or just the site 

expert, updated site expert testimony which 

you’re going to send me? I’m not quite clear. 

MS. MUNN: Yes, I agree. It’s not quite 

clear. And this brings up an issue which 
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continues to confuse a little bit. And, John, 

I need to hear from you on this as well. 

DR. MAURO (by Telephone): I would like to 

speak to this a bit and look for some 

guidance. My thinking on this is I’m taking 

precedent from what we did on Savannah River. 

When we originally reviewed our, I guess it 

was called at the time Rev. 2 of Savannah 

River, and we entered into the close-out 

process. Along the way in that close-out 

process, it was acknowledged that a major 

revision, Revision 3, was, in fact, coming 

out. 

What happened at that point is a 

judgment was made that the revisions were of a 

substantial nature, sufficient that if we were 

asked to look at, let’s say, major portions of 

the document, that would be more appropriately 

tagged as a review of a new site profile, 

granted perhaps with lesser budget. 

So I guess what I’m, I’m looking for a 

little guidance as at what point is a revision 

to a site profile substantial enough that 

probably it’s appropriate to say that this is 

a new review, and we move head on as opposed 
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to a continuation of a review of the earlier 

version of the site profile? So it sounds to 

me from this conversation that we did review 

this July 2007 version, and that the new 

changes that were made were really minor and 

don’t represent the substantial revision from 

the document that we previously reviewed. 

So in that vein it sounds like that 

this next version, this page change, is not a 

major revision. So I would propose that one 

of the ways in dealing with the fluid nature 

of this is that some judgment is made as to 

whether a major revision to a given site 

profile is imminent or has already occurred. 

And if it is a major change and the working 

group feels that there’s a need for review, 

what this really does is what I would say 

trigger a new site profile review. 

Right now I guess I’m not hearing 

that. I’m hearing that well, there is a new 

version up that but it’s some minor revisions 

to it. So I guess making that distinction 

becomes important in terms of what, perhaps 

what the working group could authorize and 

what really needs to go to the full Board to 
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authorize. 

I’m putting this forward as maybe a 

framework for deciding, you know, what really 

constitutes a continuation of the close-out 

process of what we began, and what really we 

should start thinking in terms of what 

constitutes a review of a new site profile. 

MS. MUNN: I agree. You have just 

articulated at considerable length the 

confusion that was in my mind. What I was 

trying to attempt to clarify here was my 

understanding that when we charge SC&A with 

doing one of these documents, that these minor 

revisions that go along during this process of 

going back and forth with the clearing of your 

items, was a part and parcel of your contract. 

If we have an entirely new, large 

document issue, then that is, in my view, what 

I would expect a question from SC&A as to 

whether or not this constitutes a new 

instruction for you to go forth and review new 

documentation. I had not heard anything here 

that led me to believe there was anything 

more, a page change or a few minor revisions 

in wording or insertions, that would 
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constitute what I would think of as additional 

instruction from us. 

Perhaps we need Lew to weigh in on 

that. 

 DR. WADE: And I think you’ve all defined 

the issues very well. I think that what we 

face here is a little bit between, betwixt and 

between. I don’t think that the page changes 

that Mark are referring to were simply 

editorial page changes. I think the page 

changes do encompass some new information with 

regard to the hot particle issue. So I think 

that we need to understand that. 

I think the Solomon-like approach to 

this is for the work group, if it would like, 

to ask SC&A to consider the hot particle issue 

and the information presented recently, be it 

in the interview notes or be it in the page 

changes to the soon-to-be-released site 

profile, and to provide the work group with a 

concise statement of its reaction to the 

presentation of the hot particle issue. I 

don’t think that this warrants tasking SC&A 

with a new quote/unquote site profile review 

as we did in Savannah River. 
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I think John was right. They have 

reviewed version one. This is some page 

change containing new technical information to 

version one, and I think therefore, SC&A 

should be tasked, if the work group wishes, 

with the review of the hot particle issue that 

would encompass that information plus other 

information that’s been provided to them. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Might I add some 

clarification here? Yeah, I agree that in 

this case it’s a very narrow thing, a change 

that has happened. But there’s a little bit 

of a broader context in which this is 

happening. 

Mark, correct me if I’m wrong. 

The document that we reviewed that was 

published in July was a complete rewrite of 

the external dose part of that TBD. We did 

not review that complete document. We focused 

only on the outstanding matrix items because 

that was how we interpreted the working 

group’s charge. 

MS. MUNN: That’s what you were asked to do. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: That’s right. And then in 

the course since we had to read the whole 
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document we realized there were just a couple 

of pages, three or four pages, of other issues 

that came up that we did not present as 

findings but as helpful suggestions. But 

there’s also now a full rewrite. 

Is it a full rewrite of the site 

description, Mark? 

MR. ROLFES: Yeah, I believe so. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: I believe it is a full 

rewrite. 

MR. ROLFES: Gene --

DR. MAKHIJANI: I believe this is a full 

rewrite of the internal dose. I don’t know 

that, I think there’s a substantial rewrite of 

the environmental dose. 

MR. ROLFES: Gene, could you comment on 

that? I believe our site description was, in 

fact, a full rewrite. Our external dose was a 

full rewrite that SC&A reviewed, and the 

ambient intakes, is that going to be a full 

rewrite as well? 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): Yes, it will 

be. We just about doubled the size of the 

site description, and chapter four, the 

environmental intakes or environmental dose, 
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does represent a complete rewrite. 

 DR. WADE: Well again for your 

consideration, when the Board meets at the end 

of November, we’ll talk about tasking SC&A 

with quote/unquote new site profile reviews 

for next year. It could be that the work 

group would like to recommend that the Nevada 

Test Site site profile be reviewed as a new 

site profile because of the significant 

changes. Or you might be comfortable with the 

level of effort that SC&A has put into it now 

and not make that recommendation. But that 

would be the vehicle to get the Nevada Test 

Site site profile as changed reviewed as a new 

site profile. 

MS. MUNN: This constitutes the real kernel 

of my concern here. Once the site profile has 

been reviewed and issues have been raised with 

respect to it, then we respond to those issues 

by covering them in a new document. I’m 

concerned that the new document then, instead 

of being reviewed simply for comprehension and 

covering the outstanding issues, does not take 

us back to ground zero and start all over 

again. 
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 DR. WADE: It should only do that if the 

Board assigns it as a new document to be 

reviewed as was the case in Savannah River. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: That doesn’t happen 

automatic. 

 DR. WADE: So right now you have SC&A 

focusing on matrix items as touched upon by 

page changes and that’s what they’ll do. If 

the work group would like the full Board to 

consider asking SC&A to give a complete review 

of the new quote/unquote Nevada Test Site site 

profile, that’s within the Board’s purview, 

but the Board has not done that at this point. 

MS. MUNN: Since all of the changes that 

were made were made as a result of the 

findings of the original matrix, then it 

follows in my mind that this is simply a 

response to the findings and not a new 

document as such. But that’s the issue where 

one makes the decision as to how much 

constitutes a new document as opposed to a 

response to previous findings. 

 DR. WADE: Well, if you look at what 

Savannah River taught us, Savannah River 

really, the need for a re-review resulted from 
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the fact that the original document was stale. 

It hadn’t been looked at. It sat. Things 

changed not as the result of an active review, 

but things change, and therefore, it was 

thought appropriate for SC&A to take a new 

look at that document. In this case you’re 

engaged as a work group engaged. It’s 

different. It doesn’t mean you can’t ask for 

another review if you like. 

MS. MUNN: Quite different. It doesn’t seem 

reasonable to me. It seems to me that this is 

a continuation of the same activity since we 

have had this under review and have had it 

actively being reviewed for the last year and 

a half. We haven’t really and truly let up on 

it. 

DR. NETON: I might offer our experience we 

have with Bethlehem Steel. It’s one of the 

first ones that went through this process. We 

had a matrix very similar to what is used now. 

Went through and discussed all those matrix 

items and went through the comment resolution 

process, and then at the end of that we issued 

a new revision to Bethlehem Steel which was 

never reviewed by SC&A or asked by the working 
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group to review. 

Now that might be a little different 

because at that particular point I think SC&A 

and NIOSH came to a consensus on all the open 

matrix issues. What’s different here, I 

think, is that you’re seeing that there still 

are some open items that are not going to be 

addressed. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: In Bethlehem Steel it was, 

it took a long time, but there were six 

outstanding, if I remember, there were six 

outstanding items. 

DR. NETON: We worked it down to six issues. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: And then we had agreement on 

all of them. And then there were papers or 

something on --

DR. NETON: Yeah, there were position papers 

similar to these white papers that are floated 

here. And I think that the key difference is 

though we came to an agreement that the matrix 

issues were all addressed and closed. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Right. 

 DR. WADE: And that’s what we’re trying to 

do. 

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here. So if it’s going to stay open forever 

because consensus can’t be agreed to then I 

don’t know where that goes. Because 

essentially what would happen is SC&A would be 

tasked with reviewing the new revision that 

are open matrix items, and they will comment 

on those open matrix items that weren’t 

addressed in the new revision, and that would 

be the endless loop. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Unless the Board stops it or 

makes a decision that gives you some advice or 

DR. NETON: Exactly. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Yeah, I mean, we, whether 

it’s a continuation of the matrix process or a 

new review or basically from the trenches, it 

doesn’t look that different except if it’s a 

whole new review. Then you really, then you 

look at the whole document. 

DR. NETON: But the point is you’re unlikely 

to find anything in the revision of a site 

profile that is going to be different than 

where our position stands in the matrix. So 

to commission a brand new review of the site 

profile, I think would reveal very little 
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other than the matrix has not been completely 

come to a full resolution. 

 DR. WADE: So just to move forward. Where 

we are now is that by virtue of tracking the 

matrix, there’s a hot particle issue. There’s 

been information generated by NIOSH separate 

the page changes and within the page changes. 

And the work group now has to decide if it 

wants to ask SC&A to look at the hot particle 

issue within the context of both the page 

changes and the new information. And if you 

do, SC&A will do that. If you want to give 

them some subset of that to consider, then 

they’ll do that. 

MS. MUNN: Well, it was my understanding 

that that’s what we were asking them to do is 

to look at the new information that’s been 

generated, and then it was my request earlier 

that once that’s done that we see a memorandum 

from them saying yes to this, yes to this, no 

to this. We still don’t see this covered. 

That’s why I asked for a memorandum being very 

clear about where any outstanding issues 

remain. 

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include the page changes in the site profile, 

Wanda? 

MS. MUNN: Yes. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Correct. 

 DR. WADE: Okay, then that’s everything, and 

it’s clear I think. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Brad, do you have anything? 

 MR. CLAWSON: Yeah, I am. I just want to 

make sure when we make changes, I know that we 

-- and I’ve seen it in other portions where, 

yeah, we’ve made some changes. We’re 

addressing, say, the hot particle, but also 

we’ve made some other changes. I just want to 

make sure that all the new information is 

being reviewed. I just want to make sure that 

is, because sometimes in the review process, I 

just want to make sure that everything’s being 

looked at as we go forward, and that’s my only 

concern. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Gen, you got comments on this? 

 (no response) 

 MR. PRESLEY: Yeah, I think it’s a consensus 

of the working group. 

Phillip, do you have any comments? 

MR. SCHOFIELD: No. 
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 MR. PRESLEY: I think it’s the consensus of 

the working group then that SC&A be asked to 

comment the pages as described and present us 

with a white paper with their comments on 

those pages pertaining to the hot particle 

issue. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: And I guess you’ll send us 

the page changes. 

MR. ROLFES: They’re in the matrix right 

here. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Is that agreed by everybody? 

MS. MUNN: Yes. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Arjun, is that --

DR. MAKHIJANI: Sure. I have my notes. 

 MR. PRESLEY: All right, and that then is 

our comment from, that’s comment two and 

three. So anybody got anything else from 

Comment 3? 

 (no response) 

COMMENT 4: ORO-NASAL BREATHING

 MR. PRESLEY: Okay, let’s move on to four. 

Integration (sic) of hot particles by reactor 

testing and nuclear weapons testing due to 

oro-nasal breathing. Needs to be evaluated. 

This issue will be included in a Board meeting 
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schedule. I don’t know when that’s to be 

done. 

Jim, can you --

DR. NETON: Let me say a few things about 

this. I’ve just been looking this over again, 

and I --

DR. MAKHIJANI: It should have been 

corrected, actually. 

DR. NETON: I think that this was 

mischaracterized, yes. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: We discussed this last time, 

and we haven’t revised the matrix so since you 

are revising the matrix maybe I could send you 

a correction. 

DR. NETON: I know we talked about that. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: There should be a correction 

from our side then. 

DR. NETON: Yeah, I think so. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: But it’s not oro-nasal 

breathing --

DR. NETON: Exactly, this is not oro-nasal 

breathing. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: -- ingestion of hot 

particles. 

DR. NETON: It’s an ingestion of hot 
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particles. Whether it’s through oro-nasal 

breathing or nasal breathing or wherever, 

they’re non-respirable particles, and they’re 

being ingested. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: I’ll just write down as a 

to-do item for from me to send to the working 

group that that matrix item should be amended 

to reflect ingestion of hot particles. 

DR. NETON: Because I was reading this, and 

I thought I wasn’t prepared to discuss this 

whole issue again because I thought this was 

moving on. And, in fact, I think the 

interview that was done with the person at 

Nevada Test Site sheds a lot of light on the 

ingestion of hot particles through these whole 

body counts that were done and such. And I 

think those can be tied very nicely together, 

but it’s not an oro-nasal breathing issue. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: No, no, I --

 MR. CLAWSON: So this isn’t one of the 

overarching issues. 

DR. NETON: No, no, this is a non --

 MR. CLAWSON: This is a totally different --

DR. NETON: Right, this happens to be a, 

there’s a hot particle, large hot particles 
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that are considered non-respirable that do not 

enter into the lung model at all. They just 

never enter the respiratory tract. So what 

they’re saying is you could inhale those. 

They deposit in the upper airways for whatever 

reason are swallowed. How are we dealing with 

that? That has nothing to do with the ICRP-66 

lung model and oro-nasal breathing. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: That’s correct, yes. No, we 

did talk about this and settled it last time. 

There just was no formal way to ensure 

correction into a matrix. 

DR. ROESSLER: So is the ingestion of hot 

particles settled then? I mean, you agree 

with the approach or are you talking about the 

oro-nasal? 

DR. NETON: No, no. 

DR. ROESSLER: So what happens --

DR. NETON: I think that the issue --

I’m sorry, Gen to interrupt. 

DR. ROESSLER: No, so what is --

DR. NETON: The issue is the ingestion of 

large non-respirable particles and how NIOSH 

would account for those. I think it’s 

probably limited to the reactor test sites at 
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this point, but how are we going to deal with 

that. And my sense is based on what I’ve just 

seen from some of those interviews that were 

done, we need to tie that in with the 

radiological monitoring programs, and 

particularly the whole body counting. 

I think depending on what timeframe 

those were done they could shed a lot of light 

on that. And on top of that it appears that 

there’s some assertions here that hot 

particles were few and far between. We can 

deal with it, but we need to address that 

particular issue which is how do we deal with 

ingestion of non-respirable hot particles. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: And presumably that would 

not concern the document. We’re mostly 

talking about today that being internal dose. 

DR. NETON: Right, and the issue here about 

to be included in a Board meeting is exactly 

the issue that I discussed in Naperville which 

was the oro-nasal breathing issue that really 

has nothing to do with this Comment 4. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Agreed. 

MR. ROLFES: We also have some additional 

reports and references that we have gotten 
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access to regarding standard operating 

procedures for radiation safety. Information 

on re-entry and recovery safety procedures. 

Information regarding routine support for 

nuclear detonations and reactor runs, Onsite 

Radiological Safety Reports, Onsite 

Radiological Safety Report for 42-A Operation, 

Onsite Radiological Safety Report for Kiwi APrime Plan 116, Kiwi A-Plan 16 Onsite Rad Safe 

Report, the NRX Experiment and Kiwi B-1A. So 

these are just a limited sampling of some of 

the new radiation safety reports that we’ve 

got as well. 

DR. ROESSLER: And what dates do those 

reports cover? 

MR. ROLFES: They span from 1959, let’s see, 

1958, 1959 Rad Safe. Let’s see this one. I 

don’t see a date on that one. 

DR. ROESSLER: I guess my question is do 

they cover that period that we were talking 

about before that Bruce Church maybe didn’t, 

when he wasn’t there, and he didn’t comment 

on. 

MR. ROLFES: Sure, let me take a look here. 

The Onsite Rad Safe Report for 42-A Operation 
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DR. NETON: ‘Sixty-three is the relevant 

start date there, is it not? Because --

DR. ROESSLER: Yes, because of SEC --

DR. NETON: -- prior to ’63. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: That might need some 

clarification, but aren’t you reconstructing 

external doses prior to ’63? 

MR. ROLFES: External, correct. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: So that’s how we were 

reviewing this. If that’s not correct then --

DR. NETON: External dose, not internal. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Not internal. 

DR. NETON: Right. I’m saying any internal 

dosimetry issues prior to ’63 are really not 

relevant for discussion or not necessary for 

discussion. 

MR. ROLFES: Well, the 42-A operation, the 

Onsite Rad Safe Report that we have is from 

May of 1961. So, yes, it does go back to the 

time period that ^. The other report was ’58, 

’59 time period. 

MR. RICH: And the test runs, ’63 and four. 

MR. ROLFES: ‘Sixty-three, four, okay. 

MR. CLAWSON: Well, when you’re saying the 
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reactors and stuff, is this the, like Janus, 

the different propulsion systems that they, 

like Rover? 

MR. ROLFES: Yes --

MR. CHEW: Tory and Rover. 

 MR. CLAWSON: So it’d be covering --

MR. CHEW: The ^ Kiwi oversight and ^. Area 

510 and 501. 

 MR. CLAWSON: Cover the Rover experience? 

MR. ROLFES: Yes, it does in fact, and there 

is information, for example, for Kiwi A plan 

116 Onsite Rad Safe Report. This is from 

September of 1960. Let’s see, there are 

charts in here on, let’s see, information 

regarding soil contamination resulting from 

the tests. 

 MR. CLAWSON: That also to cover the 

cleanup? 

MR. ROLFES: I certainly believe --

Gene, I haven’t had the opportunity to 

look through all of these Rad Safe reports 

that I just recently received. Have you 

looked at any more of these reports and have 

anything to add that I haven’t mentioned 

already? 
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MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): No, I haven’t 

had a chance to look at them either, Mark. 

MR. ROLFES: Okay. 

MS. MUNN: So do I understand correctly that 

Comment 4 should be reworded to read ingestion 

of non-respirable hot particles by reactor 

testing and nuclear weapons testing workers by 

any mode needs to be evaluated. Is that what 

this statement should say? 

MR. ROLFES: Based on our interview also 

with Bruce, we had some information regarding 

-- he was one of the personnel that ran the 

whole body counting unit for Pan Am. And he 

said that these particles certainly would have 

been easily detectable. Based on the 

procedures that were documented and in place 

for the personnel that were involved with the 

reactor tests, there were careful surveys done 

of the personnel. Everyone that entered the 

area was monitored and time limits were 

controlled in the area. 

DR. NETON: I think Wanda’s question was --

MS. MUNN: Yeah --

DR. NETON: Identify the issue. And I 

agree. I think you’ve captured it fairly 
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well. 

MS. MUNN: My read of the material you’ve 

provided answers that question, but I thought 

the issue was is the actual Comment worded 

properly. 

DR. NETON: I believe that’s a fairly good 

accurate portrayal of what --

 MR. PRESLEY: Can we take that oro-nasal 

breathing out and input ingestion in there? 

That should take care of --

MS. MUNN: Well, ingestion starts it though. 

If it reads ingestion of non-respirable hot 

particles by reactor testing and nuclear 

weapons workers --

 MR. PRESLEY: Needs to be evaluated. 

MS. MUNN: Yeah, needs to be evaluated or by 

any mode needs to be evaluated, yeah. 

DR. NETON: That sounds reasonable to me. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Okay, we will change that. 

MR. ROLFES: Here’s the document I was 

looking for. It’s Los Alamos Scientific 

Laboratory Report entitled the “Environmental 

Effects of the Kiwi TNT Effluent, a Review and 

Evaluation”. This document does, in fact, 

have integral gamma-neutron data at various 
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distances from the reactor test as well as 

information regarding particle size 

distributions and radionuclide content. There 

is quite a bit of detailed information in this 

document as well. 

 MR. RICH: Fallout trace. 

MR. ROLFES: Yes, quite a bit of fallout 

trace, gamma dose rates from clouds passing 

over information, air concentrations, 

potential doses to thyroids from radioiodines. 

MR. SCHOFIELD: Is that document posted on 

the O drive? 

MR. ROLFES: No, I just received it 

recently, so I’ll be happy to make it 

available to everyone. 

MR. SCHOFIELD: Oh, okay, I didn’t see it on 

the O drive. 

MR. ROLFES: Would the Advisory Board 

working group like to receive all these 

documents on the O drive? 

 MR. PRESLEY: I would. I’d like that. 

 MR. CLAWSON: Just where we can look at 

them. 

 MR. PRESLEY: The issue on this then is that 

OCAS is addressing this on a single, on a 
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project level. Is that correct, Mark? 

MR. ROLFES: Well, the --

 MR. PRESLEY: There’s really nothing else 

for us to do. 

MR. ROLFES: Sure, it’s not really a project 

level, it’s not really one of the overarching 

issues. It’s more of an ingestion issue 

specific to the NRTS, the Nuclear Reactor Test 

Station. So what we need to do is determine 

whether there were people that were 

potentially ingesting hot particles at the 

site involved in the cleanup. And what I need 

to do, and what we need to do is review these 

documents that we have, and in addition, we 

can probably clarify some of our interview 

information with the interviewee and see if we 

can directly account for this. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Do we need something back from 

Mark to the working group on their findings on 

this Comment then? 

MS. MUNN: Yes, I think Mark is going to 

give us an overview of what you see after 

you’ve reviewed the documentation, right? 

MR. ROLFES: Correct. 

Gene, will we be able to provide an 
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overview of the hot particle ingestion issue 

then? 

 (no response) 

MS. MUNN: Essentially broaden the response 

that you have here. 

 DR. WADE: Gene, you might be on mute if 

you’re speaking. 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): You’re right, I 

was on mute. Could you ask the question 

again, please? 

MR. ROLFES: Gene, I just wondered if we’d 

be able to provide a little bit more detailed 

description of the hot particle ingestion 

issue now that we have these additional 

reports. We certainly need to look at all 

these Rad Safety reports. 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): Yes, we can do 

that. 

DR. ROESSLER: It seems that by the time we 

get done to the, with this whole package, we 

will have to develop a timeline and actions to 

do with the whole NTS site, and this would be 

one of them. 

MR. SCHOFIELD: One quick question on the 

ingestion of the hot particles. How soon 
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after these ^ people did the re-entry or in 

the cleanup did they undergo a whole body? 

MR. ROLFES: Well, if we take a look at the 

interview that we have, based on the controls 

that were in place, the personnel that did the 

re-entries went in and they actually have 

information in one of these Rad Safe documents 

regarding the number of particles that they 

were able to measure within a square meter. 

And you can see that they rapidly disappeared. 

They rapidly decayed within a day or two. 

That was also confirmed by the interview that 

we had completed. So based on what we are 

aware of, based on interviews in the technical 

data that we have, individuals that would go 

into the hot area were surveyed as they 

exited. If there was any contamination found 

on these individuals, they were, in fact, 

taken to have a whole body count. I don’t 

know the exact timeframe. That is something 

that we can clarify as well. So --

MR. SCHOFIELD: So this may not turn out to 

be an issue at all. 

 MR. CLAWSON: So that would cover their 

respiratory requirements and so forth for them 
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to be able to re-enter into --

MR. ROLFES: These individuals were dressed 

out in anti-contamination. These persons had 

dosimeters on, both pocket ionization chambers 

as well as film badges for TLDs, I believe, at 

this time --

 MR. CLAWSON: I was looking more toward the 

respiratory --

MR. ROLFES: -- and respirators --

 MR. PRESLEY: They all had, most of them 

that I remember, had the full head shield on 

with the respirator and an air pack. 

 MR. CLAWSON: Now when we say hot particles 

in a square meter dissipate, now that’s decay, 

that’s not blow away. 

MR. ROLFES: They are decaying very rapidly. 

Their half-time is ^. 

 MR. CLAWSON: I know the wind never blows in 

Nevada, but it’s just a question. 

MR. RICH: Your calibration is just 

different. 

MR. CHEW: I just want to put it in 

perspective. You remember this information 

was really to understand the characteristics 

of the reactor itself, it was part of the 
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tests, in addition to obviously the safety 

side of it, but to understand particles, 

particle sizes, was really what was happening 

to the reactor itself. 

MS. MUNN: That’s why they were doing it. 

MR. CHEW: Exactly. 

MS. MUNN: It was the focus of the 

experiment. 

MR. CHEW: So we’re gleaning the information 

from this as beneficial because of the 

experimental nature of ^. 

 MR. PRESLEY: I have item four then. The 

CDC is going to revise the Comment on hot 

particles and get back to the working group 

with their revision. We will look at that 

then. 

Is that all right, Mark? 

MR. ROLFES: Certainly. We’ll go through 

these Rad Safety reports and try to summarize 

some of the important things and to page white 

paper or some other technical document. 

MS. MUNN: Probably just an expansion of the 

response more than likely will be adequate 

unless you discover something astonishing. 

COMMENT 5: MASS-LOADING APPROACH 
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 MR. PRESLEY: Comment 5, resuspension model, 

mass loading -- let’s see, on this one ^ will 

review for completeness. To my knowledge 

there was no action on Response 5 that we 

needed to take. A white paper from Gene 

Rollins on the ambient environmental intake at 

the Test Site has been incorporated into the 

Technical Basis Document, or the, not the 

Technical Basis Document. 

MR. ROLFES: That’s right. It is in the 

Technical Basis Document. It has not been 

publicly released yet. It’s still a draft 

Technical Basis Document. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Okay. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: And I believe we had 

provided you with some comments on that. 

 MR. PRESLEY: That’s correct. 

MR. ROLFES: Gene, could you -- Gene? 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): Yes. 

MR. ROLFES: We’ll have to make sure you can 

hear me. Could you provide some updated 

information regarding the intake model? Did 

you address any of the SC&A comments that we 

received? 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): Yes, I did. 
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MR. ROLFES: Okay, wonderful. 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): Most 

importantly, I think some of the fission 

activation correction factors where I’d done 

it for ten years, I broke those out into 

individual years so we got a little better 

handle on what the early time correction 

factors would look like. But I made every 

attempt to respond to all of those comments, 

and I revised that paper. And then I used 

that to help revise chapter four which is 

currently under review. 

MR. ROLFES: Great. Thank you, Gene. 

COMMENT 6: AVERAGE AIR CONCENTRATION VALUES 

COMMENT 7: RESUSPENSION DOSES

 MR. PRESLEY: There’s nothing we need to do 

with five, and if you will go on over to six, 

it has to do with the site average air 

concentrations. Then you have a notation here 

that it says, “See Response 5.” On this one 

it would be five and six together. Anybody 

have any comment? 

DR. MAURO (by Telephone): This is John 

Mauro. I see that five, six and seven really 

are all linked. 
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 MR. PRESLEY: That’s correct. 

DR. MAURO (by Telephone): And I recall that 

we’ve been through a process here where, in 

other words, the discussion we just had on 

five related to Gene’s report, the white paper 

that originally came out on July 29th, 2007, I 

believe. And then we provided comments 

subsequent to that. And then what I just 

heard is that was there another white paper 

issued after that or is the next place where 

the concerns that we raised in the most, the 

July 29th, concerns we raised regarding your 

July 29th white paper, are those now addressed 

in the TBD? 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): This is Gene 

Rollins. John, I think the latter is what 

you’re going to see. I responded to SC&A’s 

comments, and then I took the revised white 

paper and incorporated those methodologies 

into the revision of chapter four which is 

currently under review. 

DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Okay, so then 

would I be correct in saying that the issues 

raised in five, six and seven are right here 

in the matrix. The latest position and 
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response in dealing with those issues is about 

to be published in a new revision to the TBD? 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): That’s correct. 

DR. NETON: But, Gene, I thought I heard you 

say that you had revised the white paper to 

respond to SC&A’s comments. 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): That’s correct. 

I have. 

DR. NETON: So if there’s such a document, I 

just wanted to resolve this if the matrix 

process that revised document could not be 

provided for SC&A to review. We’re trying to 

resolve the issues here, and we stay clear of 

these site profiles themselves, then that 

would seem to be the relevant document to 

produce. 

DR. MAURO (by Telephone): The latest 

version of your white papers, the sequence 

that came out, I have as dated July 29, 2007. 

Is there a more recent one that was put out 

and perhaps I just didn’t see it? 

DR. NETON: I don’t think it was put out. I 

think --

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): It’s still in 

draft form. 
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DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Okay, the white 

paper, okay. 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): Revised white 

paper is undergoing reviews simultaneously to 

the chapter four. We decided to do that to 

streamline the review process somewhat. 

DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Got it. Okay. 

 DR. WADE: It would still be helpful for 

that revised white paper to make its way to 

SC&A. 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): I guess that’s 

Mark’s call. 

MR. ROLFES: Sure, we can certainly provide 

it. I didn’t know if it would be more 

appropriate though to provide it in the final 

approved version of the site profile. 

DR. NETON: Yeah, I think we need to focus 

on the process here. And the process is to 

resolve the Comment Resolution Matrix. And I 

think if we can resolve it with the white 

paper level, in my mind I think it works 

better than getting the site profiles involved 

in the mixture. I mean, site profiles will 

ultimately reflect what is resolved at this 

level, but --
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DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Jim, I agree. 

That worked very, very well on Bethlehem 

Steel, and the reason why when we were in a 

way fortunate that there was a sequence of 

white papers that went back and forth, and we 

resolved it. And then subsequent to all that, 

perhaps several months later, was when the 

revised site profile came out. It was a 

little clean that way. 

And I agree that this is certainly 

something that the working group would look to 

guidance for, but if for all intents and 

purposes your next version of your white paper 

that you currently have in preparation, if 

that could be made available, then we could 

look at that. And that would really, and 

then, of course, that might end it. We may 

have some comments on it. But it does make 

for a nice barrier between the close-out of 

the matrix issues and not enter into a review 

of perhaps a chapter or section of a TBD that 

has undergone major revision. I think it 

makes it easier for us, too. 

DR. NETON: I also strongly suspect that the 

white papers tend to have a little more 
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explanatory background information in there 

about the issues as opposed to the site 

profile, which might end up being a little 

more streamlined because of the nature of the 

document unless it becomes incorporated as a 

whole appendix. At this point it really 

doesn’t matter, but --

DR. MAURO (by Telephone): So what I’m 

hearing, and again, I would suggest that 

perhaps the process for closing out issues 

involves just a sequence of white papers that 

are triggered as a result of these work group 

meetings. And the revisions to the TBD that 

eventually emerge from the process or during 

the process, be not part of our review. 

In other words, this idea of cycling 

through white papers seems to be a way in 

which we could contain the process in a 

focused way and close out issues that are 

associated with our original site profile 

review. I guess I’d look to Mr. Presley and 

the rest of the working group if that would 

become a mode of operation that maybe we use 

not only on this site profile review but 

others. 
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 MR. PRESLEY: I think that’s a good 

approach. 

 DR. WADE: It won’t always work. 

 MR. PRESLEY: No. 

 DR. WADE: Sometime when we talk about the 

hot particles, I guess, the intellectual 

content is contained in the page changes; and 

therefore, they have to look at that. 

DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Okay. 

 DR. WADE: If possible, keeping focus is a 

good thing. 

 MR. PRESLEY: So the action item here is 

Mark’s going to give you the copy of the white 

paper for you all to review on Gene’s response 

to item seven. Is that correct? 

DR. MAURO (by Telephone): I think a 

response to five, six and seven. Am I 

correct, Gene? 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): Yes, that’s 

correct. 

 MR. PRESLEY: All right, anybody have any 

questions? 

 (no response) 

COMMENT 8: EXTERNAL DOSE DATA FOR 1963-1966

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The use of 1967 external dose data for ’63 

through ’66 is not claimant favorable. And 

let’s see. The working group has reviewed for 

completeness, and I don’t see that we need 

anything on that. Does anybody have any other 

comments on eight? 

DR. MAKHIJANI: I had a question for Mark. 

This is being incorporated into your revision 

of the environmental dose. It says here 

chapter six. Did I miss it? 

MR. ROLFES: This also, I believe the 

chapter six, Rev. 1, page change one, that’s 

currently in draft. I believe the information 

may be the coworker dose table that was 

inserted into there. 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): Mark, Mark, 

this is Gene. Excuse me just a minute. I 

think this originally related to ambient 

environmental dose. 

 MR. PRESLEY: That is correct. 

MR. ROLFES: That’s correct. 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): And we settled 

that one because of universal badging. We’re 

not adding ambient environmental dose to 

anyone after 1957. 
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MR. ROLFES: Yes, that’s correct. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Because we did not review 

this item as part of our review because I 

didn’t see that as belonging there. As Gene 

said, I think this issue is actually resolved. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Right. 

MS. MUNN: It says we were to review it for 

completeness. As far as I’m concerned it’s 

complete. 

COMMENT 9: LACK OF ENVIRONMENTAL EXTERNAL DOSE DATA FOR 

1968-1976

 MR. PRESLEY: Nine is lack of environmental 

external dose data for ’68 through ’76. And 

that again is part of Response 8 and is 

complete. It’s been taken care of. 

COMMENT 10: PRE-1963 EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENTAL DOSE 

Ten, the TBD does not provide any 

guidance for pre-’63 external environmental 

dose. Issues related to unmonitored workers. 

And on that, let’s see, we said that we were 

complete with that. Coworker external dose 

information has been added to the TBD. TBD 

page changes approved on 1/11/07. To me that 

would be complete. 

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MR. ROLFES: Okay, we had added a coworker 

dose table to the -- this is what I was 

referring to before, the coworker dose table 

was added to the Technical Basis Document. It 

was only added up until 1957. Those annual 

doses were only incorporated until ’57. That 

has now been extended beyond ’57 as well. 

Gene -- and this information is in 

chapter six, Rev. 1, page change one which is 

currently in draft and undergoing internal 

comments. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Right, that’s what I meant. 

Because there’s been a number of changes in 

chapter six since we reviewed it, not just 

that one that we talked about. The page 

changes in volume six of the site profile 

don’t only relate to the items two and three 

that we talked about. 

MR. ROLFES: Correct, there are, there are -

-

DR. MAKHIJANI: There are other page 

changes, too. 

MR. ROLFES: There are other page changes 

that address some of these other matrix items 
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DR. MAKHIJANI: I wasn’t aware of that. 

MR. ROLFES: And we documented that this 

particular page change is on page 42 of the 

revision. So we’ve specifically identified 

where the changes are taking place to make it 

easier to review. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Right, and all I’m saying is 

that we haven’t looked at that. 

MS. MUNN: That will be picked up in the 

review that we --

 MR. PRESLEY: It will be picked up in the 

review? 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, yeah, if you wish, 

yes. 

 MR. CLAWSON: Yes, we need to have that 

reviewed. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: So will you send us all the 

page changes in chapter six? 

MR. ROLFES: They’re written in. 

MS. MUNN: I think they’re all listed here. 

MR. ROLFES: Yeah, they’re written in. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: So when you send them to us 

you’ll send them to us all together. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Yeah, it’s here. 
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MR. ROLFES: In the response. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Section 6 --

DR. MAKHIJANI: This is the substance of the 

page change or? 

MR. ROLFES: This information will allow you 

to find the updated information. So it 

indicates that the information can be found in 

Section 6.4.1.1, page 42. As soon as the 

document is approved, we’ll make sure that the 

page numbers stay the same, and we’ll forward 

that. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: All I want to say is that we 

don’t have this PC-1, PC-01 version. 

MR. ROLFES: No, no, you do not at this 

time. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: You need to send that to us 

before. That’s all I wanted to say. 

MS. MUNN: Hard to review it without having 

it. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Right, it’s not here. 

COMMENT 11: CORRECTION FACTORS FOR EXTERNAL 

ENVIRONMENTAL DOSE

 MR. PRESLEY: Comment 11 is correction 

factors for external environmental dose due to 

the geometry of organs related to badge and 
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angular dependence of the dose conversion 

factors needs to be developed. And the 

Comment on that was working group reviewed for 

completeness. 

And I think that NIOSH agrees that an 

assessment of job types may be necessary to 

determine which ones need correction factors 

for angular dependence and geometry. A worker 

category job matrix has been added to the TBD, 

and it gives this addition at the bottom of 

that. It has been approved by OCAS on 

10/1/07. 

MR. ROLFES: That I did send out to the 

working group members as well. That was the 

site description, Technical Basis Document of 

the ^ site profile. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: And we have not looked at 

that. 

DR. ROESSLER: Are we adding these pages 

then to SC&A’s assignments, page changes that 

you mentioned? 

 MR. PRESLEY: Now this one the page changes 

are page 35 through 36. 

MR. ROLFES: That’s part of the external 

dose TBD which is still -- well, I believe 
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that information was incorporated in the last 

go round, and I believe I don’t know if SC&A 

was asked to look at these specific page 

changes the last time. However, the job 

matrix issue was addressed in the site 

description. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: I must confess I treated 

this as part of an environmental dose review 

and so did not address it as part of the 

external dose issues. I only went through --

the way I sort of asked our team to work, and 

the way I put the paper together was I went 

through all the items that related to external 

dose and left out all the items that related 

to internal dose and environmental dose in 

site description and every other piece of the 

TBD. 

And so I might, it looks like this is, 

even though it’s labeled environmental dose, 

it is in the, in volume six. So I think we, 

I’m pretty sure that I missed this because 

it’s labeled environmental dose. I didn’t 

call this out in our white paper as a specific 

item to review. Yeah, I didn’t. 

 MR. CLAWSON: What you’re saying is you need 
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to be able to look at this? 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, yeah. Yeah, I guess 

it was just a screening method. When we’re 

not asked to review the whole document, I used 

a minimal screening method to go through the 

document and pull out the items that related 

external doses that were identified in the 

matrix. And I restricted pretty much, except, 

you know, we found some other things while 

reading the sections and culled them out. But 

we did not review the, as I said, we did not 

review the whole document. 

 MR. PRESLEY: According to the document here 

this has already been approved. 

MS. MUNN: How extensive is that job matrix, 

Mark? 

MR. ROLFES: The job matrix, Gene, could you 

explain what we put into the site description 

for the job matrix, please? 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): What we did 

here was we went in and looked at the geometry 

independence. And we determined that 

correction factors would be either equal to or 

less than one. And so there were no 

corrections that were called for. And that 
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evaluation is included in the TBD. 

MS. MUNN: So is this out? 

MR. ROLFES: Well, that’s in the external ^. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: It’s like two different 

pieces here I think, volume two and there’s 

volume six, neither of which we looked at. 

MR. ROLFES: Gene, do you know the specific 

area where the job matrix is in the site 

description? 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): I’d have to go 

look that up, Mark. 

MR. ROLFES: Okay, I’m looking through right 

now. Let’s see, I do have Attachment C here, 

NTS Contractor Job Titles and Exposure 

Potential Review, job title references. This 

appears to be from page 73 to 78 within the 

site description. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Can we go ahead and add those 

pages to what we want SC&A to look at and let 

them come back with a comment for those few 

pages? 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Thirty-five, 36? 

 MR. PRESLEY: It would be under --

MR. ROLFES: This was in regards to the site 

description. 
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 MR. PRESLEY: Page 77 and 78. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: And this other piece in 

volume six that we did not review, but they 

were labeled environmental dose. I did not go 

over them. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Anybody have a problem with 

that? Let’s go ahead and ask SC&A to look at 

those pages? 

And, Gene? 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): Yes. 

 MR. PRESLEY: This is Bob Presley. If you 

would, make sure that those are all of the 

correct pages for that matrix, please, when 

you get a chance, you or Mark. 

MR. ROLFES: In looking through here I did 

find some additional pages here. It is in 

Tables C-1, C-2 and C-3 in the site 

description. C-1 is the REECo job titles that 

probably had some potential for workplace 

external or internal exposures. Table C-2 

contains information for REECo job titles that 

possibly had potential for exposures. And C-3 

is other contractor job titles with some 

potential for workplace internal and external 

exposures. And these are from pages 79 
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through 83. So there should be some text 

description surrounding those pages as well. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Lew, do we have a problem with 

asking that? 

 DR. WADE: (Unintelligible). 

DR. ROESSLER: You have to have good 

eyesight to read those tables. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Has anybody got anything else 

on this? 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Just for clarity, Mr. 

Presley, the volume six pages 35, 36, 101, 102 

as I said, we did not review them even though 

they are in volume six because this item was 

labeled environmental dose, and I did not 

review any item that was labeled environmental 

dose as part of our review because I was 

restricted to what I thought covered only 

external dose for people who were badged or 

not badged in relation to their occupation. 

And so we can leave it like that, but I just 

want to let you know that we did not review 

those pages. 

DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Bob and Lew, this 

is John Mauro. Again, by way of focusing our 

activities, it sounds like we have two 
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different -- right now the strategy that is 

emerging is that either there’s a white paper 

that’s issued that addresses our concerns, or 

there are particular sections in the TBD that 

has already been issued, or pages. And it 

sounds like the pages where these issues might 

be addressed could be in several locations, or 

it’s about to be addressed in a TBD. 

One approach that we could use when 

we’re dealing with the TBD or soon-to-beissued TBD sounds like SC&A will receive some 

direction to go forward and review the 

appropriate portions of the revised or to-berevised TBD. And one approach would be where 

NIOSH would simply point out, review these 

pages and these tables. And then we would, 

with respect to the issue at hand. 

Or alternatively, SC&A could be 

tasked, please take a look at the TBD and 

review it with respect to this particular 

issue. The latter, of course, would be a 

little bit more open-ended and give us more 

leeway to take into consideration other 

material that we might consider to be relevant 

to the issue at hand. I understand that we 
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should not go outside of the issue. 

Or I can say the other approach where 

NIOSH would simply identify the pages, and we 

would limit ourselves to just the review of 

those pages and those tables. A little 

guidance there might be helpful. 

 DR. WADE: Well, you’ve identified two 

mechanisms, and I think the work group will be 

specific in terms of which it’s asking you to 

do on a case-by-case basis, John. 

DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Very good, thank 

you. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Do you all want them to go 

back and review the pages one and two of this 

document or does, you know, this was strictly 

for an external environmental dose? 

 (no response) 

 MR. PRESLEY: Anybody have a comment? 

DR. ROESSLER: I’m not sure what you mean by 

pages one and two. I must have slipped away 

for a minute. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Well, there’s 101 and 102 --

I’m sorry -- of Attachment B. 

 MR. CLAWSON: What about 35 through 36? 

 MR. PRESLEY: Page 35 through 36 also. 
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 MR. CLAWSON: Arjun, have you reviewed any 

of this information going into --

DR. MAKHIJANI: No. As I said, we went 

through the whole document but the way I 

organized what we wrote was according to 

comment for external occupational dose. So 

when I organized what our people did, I didn’t 

actually include any environmental dose item 

in our response in terms of a finding. 

 MR. CLAWSON: So really, you may have 

already had a response, but this is new to 

this section so we do need to look at it. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: All of us have read, you 

know, the people, I asked them to read the 

documents and so it was a complete review, but 

I got kind of a miscellany of bullet points 

back from everybody, and I organized them 

according to external occupational dose only. 

And I actually didn’t organize some of those 

points. Some things that were errors, 

comments I just put at the end as 

miscellaneous comments for NIOSH, but I didn’t 

do an organized review of those items. It 

wouldn’t be complicated to do it. It’s just I 

didn’t organize the review in that way. 
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 MR. PRESLEY: Okay, this is a correction 

factor issue. To be on the safe side I’m 

going to say let’s go ahead and let SC&A look 

at these pages, 35, 36 and 101 and 102. If 

they have a comment on that we would like to 

have a comment back, please, sir. 

MR. ROLFES: I believe that we were asked 

whether correction factors specific to 

environmental contamination needed to be 

developed. So what we did, we did complete 

calculations to determine whether 

environmental contamination from a planer 

surface of contaminated soil would have any 

difference in effect on the dose conversion 

factors for specific organs for external dose. 

And we came up with an analysis that indicated 

near unity of dose conversion factors. So we 

didn’t feel that it was necessary to have more 

specific dose conversion factors that are 

different from what we have in an approved 

Technical Basis Document, in an approved 

Implementation Guide, excuse me. 

 MR. PRESLEY: At this time I’d like to take 

a break, about 15 minutes. Let’s start back 

at ten ‘til. Some of us have to go check out. 
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We will be back in here at ten ‘til. Is that? 

 DR. WADE: I’m going to mute the phone until 

ten ‘til. John Mauro, are you on the line? 

 (no response) 

 DR. WADE: John Mauro? 

DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Yes, I had to 

unmute it. 

 DR. WADE: Would you call my cell phone 

right now, please? 

DR. MAURO (by Telephone): I will. 

 DR. WADE: Thank you. 

I’m going to put you on mute. 

(Whereupon, the working group took a break 

from 10:37 a.m. until 10:55 a.m.) 

 DR. WADE: Okay, we’re back in session. 

COMMENT 12: RADON DOSES IN G-TUNNEL; GRAVEL GERTIE RADON 

DOSES

 MR. PRESLEY: This is Bob Presley. What I’m 

going to do is start with Comment 12. It has 

to do with radon doses in G-tunnel are not 

claimant favorable. Also, it talks about 

Gravel Gerties and radon doses. If you go 

down to the response, the Gravel Gerties were 

only used to test designs for Pantex. They 

were never continuously occupied. This has 
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been put to bed. 

The working group will review the 

comments on the TBD when it comes out. As far 

as the radon dose in the tunnels, let’s see, 

that has been discussed. In fact, we have 

NIOSH agrees that the -- to issue claimant 

favorable or higher integrated results has 

been done. And I think that SC&A has looked 

at that and concurs. 

Is that correct, Arjun? 

DR. MAKHIJANI: I believe so. 

 MR. PRESLEY: All right, and Response 12 can 

be put to bed. 

COMMENT 13: ENVIRONMENTAL DOSES DUE TO I-131 VENTING 

Thirteen has to do with the 

environmental dose due to venting and the 

working group that will review this as I 

understand it, Mr. Smith provided results for 

bounding calculations. And currently OCAS has 

this under review. Is that correct? 

MR. ROLFES: That’s correct. ORAU has 

incorporated some example bounding 

calculations of radio iodine intakes, and we 

have incorporated that information into the 

draft Technical Basis Document, the internal 
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dose Technical Basis Document, in Section 

5.3.3.1 and 5.6.1. This is currently at OCAS 

undergoing internal comments and so should be 

released in the near future. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Okay. 

 MR. CLAWSON: So that means that, Arjun, you 

haven’t seen that yet. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: No. Number two, number four 

and number five volumes or chapters, I think, 

are being re-issued, and we haven’t seen those 

yet. Two has been published, but we haven’t 

looked at it. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Then what we need to make sure 

is we get you Section 5.3.3.1, page 41, and 

Section 5.6.1, page 52, for reviewing this 

matter. Is that correct? Anybody have any 

comment on that? 

MS. MUNN: Sounds right. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Now, we don’t know when these 

are going to come out. Is that right, Mark? 

We’re still waiting for the OCAS review on 

this so this is something that may be down the 

road. 

MR. ROLFES: I’ll let Gene comment on that. 

We recently received a draft from ORAU. I 
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want to say that this is probably being 

returned back to ORAU with some comments from 

OCAS. 

Gene, have you received OCAS comments 

on the internal five section of NTS? 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): No. 

MR. ROLFES: No, you haven’t yet, okay. 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): No, on the 

internal, no. 

MR. ROLFES: All right, I don’t have a 

timeline. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Okay, so what we will do is 

that the up and coming when that comes back, 

to get those pages. Those page numbers may 

change if there are additions or deletions. 

There’s a possibility that those pages may 

change, so, Mark, if you will get the 

appropriate pages to SC&A. 

MR. ROLFES: Correct. I’ll make sure that 

the final page numbers are in fact correct. 

The section should not change however. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: I’d like to just, this isn’t 

the only place where there’s a reference to 

the new TBD, and as I understood from Gene 

earlier, this is going to be a new TBD, 
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rewritten. As a matter of procedure when we 

receive a completely new document to read it 

to get the context of what is being said. Of 

course, we restrict the review as we did this 

time pretty much to the items that are 

mentioned. Now this is just one item. There 

are a number of other items so I don’t know, 

this is sort of going back to the beginning in 

a way whether or not to restrict it just to 

these pages and then come back at a future 

meeting to other items or... 

 MR. PRESLEY: I think that the Board will 

have to be the person that says that this 

whole TBD needs to be reviewed. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: So for now we’ll just do 

these two sections. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Is that correct, Lew? 

 DR. WADE: Correct. 

COMMENT 14: INTERNAL DOSE FOR THE PRE-1967

 MR. PRESLEY: Response 14, it says that 

there are no internal monitoring data until 

the late 1955 or 1956, some plutonium from 

then on, some tritium from ’58, plutoniumtritium mixed fusion products from 1961 and 

full radionuclide coverage established in 
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about 1967. It says that the TBD does not 

provide sufficient guidance for estimating 

internal dose for the pre-‘67 periods for many 

radionuclides. 

The Comment on this was that guidance 

will be provided in the TBD, how to interpret 

in a claimant favorable manner gross fusion 

products, bioassay results. And this goes 

back to Comment 5 again which states -- I’m 

going back to it. Production models, it says 

that the TBD or the, is in review and will be 

coming out. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Mr. Presley, only a part of 

this goes back to Comment 5. A part of this 

relates to interpretation of bioassay results 

which is not part of Comment 5. 

MR. ROLFES: Correct, and we are preparing 

guidance that will be addressed in the 

internal dose TBD on how to interpret the 

gross ^ fission product activity. 

DR. ROESSLER: Is this in Rollins’ white 

paper or this is... 

MR. ROLFES: This is what Arjun is 

mentioning is slightly separate from the 

resuspension model or the ambient intakes that 
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we’re referring to. 

And, Gene, could you explain a little 

bit of the difference between some of the 

updates that we’re doing? We agreed to 

provide some guidance on the interpretation of 

gross fission product bioassay results in a 

claimant favorable manner. Now this is a 

completely separate issue from assigning 

environmental ambient intakes. Could you 

elaborate a little bit further on this, 

please? 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): Right, we had 

guidance outside of the Technical Basis 

Document guidance to dose reconstructors about 

how to interpret gross alpha and gross beta 

bioassay results. And it basically tells the 

dose reconstructor what radionuclide, beta or 

alpha emitter, would be the limiting 

radionuclide for a particular cancer organ. 

And that information has now been incorporated 

into chapter five. But that’s guidance that 

we’ve been using for several years now. We 

just made it part of the TBD. 

MS. MUNN: Do we have a good reference for 

SC&A as far as page number’s concerned on that 
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particular item on the gross fission product? 

MR. ROLFES: Gene, do we have a page number 

in the internal dose TBD as to where this 

might be located? 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): I’ll have to go 

look that up, Mark. 

MR. ROLFES: Okay. 

MS. MUNN: Can he get that to Arjun? 

MR. ROLFES: Certainly. 

The section number also, Gene, if you 

could look that up while we continue, that 

would be great. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Okay, the action item on there 

is CDC is going to provide to SC&A the page 

number and a section number to look at on this 

Response 14. 

COMMENT 15: RESUSPENSION OF RADIONUCLIDES 

COMMENT 16: USE OF PHOTON DOSE 

Response 15 and 16 have to do with 

resuspension of radionuclides by the blast 

wave and also use of the photon dose as done 

by DTRA. Both of these, as I see it, are 

spelled out in Finding 12, Issue 5.6.3. The 

working group is waiting to review this for 

completeness. 
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Mark, this is a new Technical Basis 

Document. Is that correct? 

MR. ROLFES: Yeah, the Comments, we’re going 

to get an updated white paper to SC&A that has 

SC&A’s comments resolved in that. The 

internal dose from atmospheric weapons testing 

time periods is no longer being reconstructed 

because of the SEC designation. So our white 

paper, which assigns ambient environmental 

intakes will only be covering the period from 

1963 forward. 

DR. ROESSLER: And that white paper is the 

white paper we discussed before? 

MR. ROLFES: Correct, that is Gene Rollins’ 

white paper that has been prepared to assign 

claimant favorable ambient environmental 

intakes. We did receive comments from SC&A; 

however, we haven’t updated and we haven’t 

released our responses or incorporation of 

SC&A’s comments into the document. 

DR. ROESSLER: So SC&A’s specific assignment 

is when they’re looking at this white paper to 

look at this issue also. 

 MR. PRESLEY: As I understand it they have 

already made their comments once. 
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MR. ROLFES: Yes. 

 MR. PRESLEY: And CDC has issued their 

comments back to SC&A or they’re getting ready 

to issue their comments back to SC&A. And 

what we will get then is a, hopefully, a 

completed response from this. 

Is that correct, Arjun? 

DR. MAKHIJANI: I believe so, yeah, John is 

actually responsible for that. 

DR. MAURO (by Telephone): This is John. By 

way of Mark a little clarification. It was my 

understanding in Comment 15 says it was 

focused specifically on resuspension 

associated with blast wave is now off the 

table because that would be the portion 

covered by the SEC. Am I correct in that? 

MR. ROLFES: That’s correct. 

DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Okay, good, so 

really what we have here now is Comment 16 

which could certainly apply to pre- and postabove ground testing. And then what I 

understand is you will be providing us with 

page numbers or a white paper that addresses 

these issues. 

MR. ROLFES: For Comment 16 we will not be 
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using external dose to estimate internal dose 

as was done by DTRA. That was a separate 

thing. We sort of skipped over and combined 

Comments 15 and 16 I guess. But we are not 

going to be pursuing assigning internal dose 

based on external dose data. 

DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Does that resolve 

both 15 and 16? 

MR. PRESLEY: Yeah. 

DR. MAURO (by Telephone): That’s what I 

heard. 

DR. ROESSLER: So there’s no outstanding 

issue on either one of those then. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: That’s correct. 

MS. MUNN: Done and done except for our 

Board. 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): Mark, this is 

Gene. I have a page number for that 

additional guidance to dose reconstructors. 

MR. ROLFES: Okay, this is for Response 14. 

MS. MUNN: It is? 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): And it’s going 

to be, we added a Section 5.6.3, and it starts 

on my page 53. 

MR. ROLFES: Thank you, Gene. 
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 MR. PRESLEY: Fifteen and 16 are complete. 

COMMENT 17: INGESTION DOSES NEED TO BE BETTER EVALUATED 

Seventeen has to do with ingestion doses need 

to be better evaluated. And we have a comment 

that TBD revision eight-dash-five in draft is 

currently at OCAS for review. Right now I 

don’t see anything that the working group can 

do until we get that back for review in pages 

49 through 54. 

What, Wanda? 

MS. MUNN: I was just asking Arjun if we’re 

still on Response 17. 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): This is Gene. 

I’m not sure you’re going to find that in 

chapter five. You’re probably going to find 

it in my revised chapter four. 

DR. MAURO (by Telephone): And, Gene, do you 

basically adopt OTIB-0018 approach in that 

section? This is John. 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): Yeah, what 

you’re going to find in my revised chapter 

four, I’ve got an ingestion model where we’re 

having the workers ingest 100 milligrams per 

day. 

DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Okay, so you’re 
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not going with the OTIB-0018 approach. 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): No, let me 

finish. That’s for the above ground workers. 

And what I have proposed to do for the below 

ground workers is to provide them with that 

ingestion dose as well as ten percent of OTIB0018 maximum values. 

DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Okay. 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): So that’s why, 

I’m attempting to provide a reasonable upper 

bound on what they could have possibly 

ingested. 

DR. MAURO (by Telephone): I hear. 

COMMENT 18: OTIB-0002 FOR POST-1971 TUNNEL RE-ENTRY 

WORKERS

 MR. PRESLEY: Gene, this is Bob Presley. 

Then that would take in Response 17 and also 

Response 18 for the tunnel re-entry workers. 

Is that going to be in that same section? 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): Well, what 

we’re finding is the early re-entry and 

recovery individuals typically were required 

to wear respiratory protection. And this 

OTIB-0018 approach is only going to be used 

for those individuals who worked underground 
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who did not have any bioassay data. And so 

most of the recovery and re-entry people we 

can reconstruct their internal based on their 

actual bioassay data. And that’s always 

preferable. 

 MR. CLAWSON: Isn’t 18 a little bit 

different though? 

DR. MAKHIJANI: That’s what he just said. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Yeah, that’s what he just 

said. That it is different. It has to do --

MS. MUNN: And that would only apply to a 

portion of that. 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): Originally, 18, 

I believe as I remember this, was there was 

the allowance for using OTIB-0002 during 

certain time periods, but there was not 

guidance provided as to when it would not be 

appropriate to use OTIB-0002. And that 

guidance has been added to chapter five. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Now I’m confused. Are we 

talking about two or 18? 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): This one’s 

talking about two. 

MR. ROLFES: He’s talking about Comment 18. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Well, wait a minute --
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MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): OTIB-0002. 

 MR. PRESLEY: -- Gene, wait just a minute. 

Seventeen as I see it is complete. We’re 

waiting for the OCAS review, and when that 

happens then we will give SC&A pages 49 

through 54. 

Now, 18 has to do with the tunnel reentry group --

DR. MAKHIJANI: Mr. Presley, before you go 

on. He said he has changed all that and it’s 

in a different volume altogether. So I 

thought that’s what Gene just said that 

Response 17 is no longer, this section is no 

longer dealing with Response 17. It’s some 

place else. 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): Right. The 

incidental ingestion issue is going to be 

discussed in chapter four. 

MS. MUNN: In the revision it will be in 

chapter four. 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): Which is 

currently under review. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: And so presumably there’s a 

section that you’ll send us along? Is that 

what you meant, Mr. Presley? That we should 
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review the whatever section that is? 

 MR. PRESLEY: Yes. If it’s in Section 4, 

then we need to get you the pages from Section 

4 that pertain to Response 17 for review, 

whatever they be. 

MS. MUNN: And can we take out that 

reference to OTIB-0018 now then because I 

think we just heard how OTIB-0018 is going to 

be used. So we did review 18. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Yeah, I’ve noted that this 

is different than 18 in my matrix. 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): Now Comment 18 

as I remember -- and this goes back along 

ways, but what was going on there, there was a 

specific statement in OTIB-0002 that it would 

not be used for underground workers. And that 

limitation was not specifically in chapter 

five of the NTS TBD. And we have subsequently 

added that just to assure the dose 

reconstructors would not use OTIB-0002 for 

underground workers. 

MS. MUNN: And that was the page 53 change 

referred to, right? 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): I think that 

change has been in there before the latest 
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page change. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: I think that this has been 

resolved some time back because NIOSH agreed 

to this some time back, and I don’t think 

there should be anything to review here. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Okay, so under 17 there’s 

nothing to review. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Eighteen. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Or 18? 

MS. MUNN: Eighteen is done except for --

 MR. CLAWSON: So, Arjun, just so I’m clear 

on this, what you’re telling us is the section 

of OTIB-0002, you reviewed that where they 

took out excluding it from underground 

workers? 

DR. MAKHIJANI: No, Brad, what it said in 

OTIB-0002 is that it should not be used for 

Nevada Test Site underground workers, and the 

first, revision zero, of the NTS site profile 

allowed it to be used for underground workers 

even though it wasn’t meant to be used. And 

now that restriction has been placed that 

OTIB-0002 should not be used at Nevada Test 

Site, and they’ve made that guidance to dose 

reconstructors clear. So that issue is just 
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resolved. 

 MR. CLAWSON: I apologize. I’m just a 

little hard to follow. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: No, lots of procedures. 

 MR. PRESLEY: All right, 18’s complete. 

COMMENT 19: PRE-1966 BETA DOSE 

Let’s go on to 19. If you would, go back to 

your six-page matrix, please. Nineteen has to 

do with beta dose data, and Arjun, do you want 

to speak about this Comment there? And then 

we can go from there. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Our original comment had 

been that there had been no measurements of 

beta dose before 1966, and a good bit of our 

review that we submitted to you was for the 

material that NIOSH had added to estimate beta 

dose before 1966. They added three different 

-- their basic approach was to calculate the 

ratio of, an estimated ratio of beta dose to 

photon dose. 

And photon dose was measured, and they 

had three different models for that: 

immersion in a cloud with beta- and photonemitting particles, surface contamination with 

beta and photon particles and exposure to a 
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point source. And we had different comments 

on each of these. Overall, it was a very 

substantial and detailed response to our 

comment with a lot of calculations just as a 

caveat. It was a very lengthy and involved 

process that NIOSH undertook. 

We did not try to reproduce the 

calculations as part of this review. We 

responded, our comments are sort of restricted 

to the methodology and not to the numbers 

because trying to reproduce the numbers would 

have been very time consuming and cumbersome, 

and we thought that you should direct us to do 

that if you wanted us to do it. 

So in some places we agreed with the 

NIOSH methodology that called out the summary, 

let me read the summary into the record so 

that it’s there. Let me find it. Here’s the 

summary that we provided in our review. 

Status of beta dose for 1966. ORAU Team 2007 

does not provide an appropriate modification 

of Hicks’ tables for tower and surface shots. 

With this limitation ORAU Team 

provides a considerable analysis and in some 

cases a claimant favorable approach to 
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estimating some beta doses for unmonitored 

personnel. However, a number of issues remain 

to be addressed even when the dose estimation 

approach appears to be reasonable. 

A validation of the ratios using post1966 data was not reported in ORAU Team 2007 -

- that is the volume six revised external dose 

document -- so validation of the ratios using 

post-1966 data was not reported and apparently 

has not been done. For skin doses up to 1966, 

issue of dose reconstruction still remains 

essentially unresolved. 

And here we agree with NIOSH, that 

there are no measurements. It’s essentially 

impossible to reconstruct dose, and NIOSH has 

acknowledged this. 

And NIOSH acknowledges that, quote, 

without recorded contamination levels, skin 

dose is virtually impossible to determine. 

Hence, pre-1966 dose issue is unresolved. 

And so that’s sort of a summary of it. 

It’s quite an involved review. I can go 

through some of the highlights. One of the 

procedural comments was that the Hicks’ tables 

were developed for offsite and need to be 
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modified. The surface contamination beta-tophoton dose ratio would not be claimant 

favorable for exposures at less than 120 

centimeters. Especially, they would not be 

claimant favorable when jobs that involved 

sitting or being closer to the surface than 

120 centimeters were involved. 

And we also found that the efficiency 

ratio of three-to-five, which is sort of less 

than some of the ratios mentioned, was not 

well justified and could be used on dose 

calculations but not for maximum or best 

estimate doses. For the immersion dose we 

found generally the beta-to-gamma ratios to be 

claimant favorable. There are quite a lot of 

involved calculations, and we didn’t verify 

them, with the caveat that they can’t be 

reliably applied to skin doses, but otherwise 

we found the immersion dose ratios to be 

appropriate. 

And the other operational areas 

involved point sources, and there there’s a 

one meter distance to which this has been 

calibrated, and we found that that was not 

always claimant favorable. Especially, 
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there’s a 30 centimeter standard working 

distance for the length of the human form and 

so perhaps a bigger photon ratio for that 

range needs to be calculated. 

I think that sort of covers the broad 

outlines of our review. But there are many 

other details including six bullet points that 

are on page seven of our review that provide 

some comments on Attachment C that I can go 

through if you like, but they’re there for you 

to look at. 

MR. ROLFES: Significant beta doses are 

going to be associated primarily with exposure 

to fresh fission products in immersion in 

fission products. And these are typically 

associated with incidents or acute exposures. 

Anyway, the typical exposures usually involve 

gamma exposures at Nevada Test Site. 

In order to specifically address the 

beta-to-gamma ratio we reviewed approximately 

200 external dosimetry files. And I’m going 

to read from this. I just got this. I 

apologize. I guess I just got it the night 

before last and haven’t had the opportunity to 

pass it on to the working group members. 
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We reviewed approximately 200 external 

dosimetry files. They were examined for 

positive neutron, beta and gamma results. Of 

the 200 claimant files that we reviewed, only 

one positive neutron result for one individual 

was located. But specific to the individuals 

that were monitored for beta and gamma 

exposures post-1966, what -- I’ll just read 

this here. 

Twenty-three of the 200 claimant 

external dosimetry files contained a total of 

140 positive beta for shallow dose results. 

What was readily apparent from the review is 

that even that when there were positive beta 

results in a file, they were not the norm. 

There were a total of 256 positive photon 

results for the years in which positive beta 

results were located. 

The most common situation was a 

preponderance of non-positive results with 

several positive beta results usually 

associated with these positive photon results. 

These results were analyzed in order to 

identify an associated beta-to-photon ratio. 

The beta-to-photon ratios, which were 
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based on annual external dosimetry totals for 

the years in which positive beta results were 

available -- this was the post-’66 and after 

1966 -- a review of the 50 annual ratios found 

25 of these ratios to be less than one-to-one. 

Another 13 ratios were between one and two to 

one. And only three of the 50 ratios were 

equal to or greater than four-to-one beta to 

gamma. The largest annual beta-to-photon 

ratio was 4.1-to-one. 

I think this will reinforce and 

demonstrate that our beta-to-gamma ratios that 

we’re assigning are, indeed, claimant 

favorable. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: If I may just comment, I 

neglected to ask, I’ve invited Lynn Anspaugh 

to join. I don’t know if he did. And I know 

Joe is on the line and helped us with this. 

Joe and Lynn, did I do justice to your 

work or did I skip anything? 

DR. ANSPAUGH (by Telephone): Well, this is 

Lynn. I think you’ve done fine. 

MR. ZLOTNICKI (by Telephone): This is Joe. 

I think one issue with the post-’66 data is I 

had noted that the film badge for a variety of 
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reasons, if there were lower energy betas 

around, say -- it’s very had to put an exact 

number on it, but say less than 500 keV betas. 

They will have been likely missed or severely 

under reported post-’66 so that using this 

ratio method would underestimate those lower 

energy betas. 

All the lower energy components, 

depending upon the calibration method, whether 

or not field calibration was used for those 

energies and so on. So I think in general 

what was described by going back and looking 

in the record sounds impressive, but I would 

put that caveat there that the badge had a 

fairly thick wrapper as best I can tell and 

may have been in a bag most of the time and so 

was actually missing betas post-’66. So that 

needs to be considered. 

MS. MUNN: Excuse me, I’m a slow learner, 

and sometimes when I hear things like that I 

have a problem grasping exactly the full 

meaning of what’s being said. What you’re 

telling me, I think, is that the badge 

readings are no good, and we can just throw 

them out on the assumption that they were 
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never adequate to begin with. Is that what I 

heard? 

MR. ZLOTNICKI (by Telephone): I hope you 

didn’t hear that, but maybe you did. No, I 

wouldn’t go that far. I would say that for 

high energy betas the badge is going to detect 

them well and was presumably calibrated for 

those betas. But for the component of beta 

that was lower energy, the betas never 

penetrated the badge even though they could 

penetrate through the skin to the depth that 

could cause damage. 

So the problem is how are those low 

energy betas addressed. And that’s really the 

question. And in an intermediate range it can 

be addressed with the calibration system, but 

at some lower energies, you just don’t see 

them at all. And so I can’t begin to say 

where on the site lower energy betas would 

have been an issue other than to say I would 

imagine there were places where that was an 

issue. 

But I’m not the person to speak to 

those, the exact fields, only to the fact that 

the badge had a fairly thick coating on it and 
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would have missed any low energy betas anyway. 

So one can’t just hand one’s hat on the ratio 

and simply say, well, we’re okay because the 

post-’66 ratio never exceeded 4.1-to-one. 

MS. MUNN: Well, I’m having a hard time with 

the fact that we understand what fission 

products are, and we understand what the 

emissions are from those fission products. 

And why we would, therefore, assume that there 

is a slew of low energy betas that weren’t 

being measured somewhere, I can’t make the 

connection in my mind. 

MR. ROLFES: The average beta particle 

energy -- excuse me -- we’re talking about 

beta particles that are in excess of 500 keV 

from fission products where the significant 

beta doses could occur. So we really don’t 

have evidence to indicate that there were 

significant low energy beta exposures at the 

Test Site. 

MS. MUNN: I guess that was my point. 

DR. ROESSLER: What energy did you mention? 

I didn’t get that. 

MR. ROLFES: Five hundred keV would be 

everything --
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DR. ROESSLER: So less than, he’s concerned 

about the ones less than --

MR. ROLFES: He’s concerned about less than 

500 keV; however, fission product beta 

activities for -- excuse me -- beta energies 

are typically in excess of 500 keV. For 

example, Strontium-90 is 3 meV, yeah, 3 meV 

beta particle. So the average energy for that 

would be 1 meV. It would be a third of the 

maximum. So fission products are going to 

typically have high energies. 

DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Mark, this is 

John. As I understand it is your initial 

approach -- and I did read our report, and 

what I’m hearing is that you had a theoretical 

approach for these three different exposure 

scenarios as described by Arjun earlier. 

And am I correct that the models that 

were used to come up with the ratios were 

based on understanding what the fission 

product mix is as a function of time. And 

therefore, knowing -- and the activation 

products. Therefore, knowing that mix, and of 

course, knowing the decay scheme of all those 

radionuclides, you’re in a position to come up 
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with what you think theoretically, not by 

measurement, but theoretically, what would be 

the relationship between photon exposure and 

beta exposure as a function of time and 

distance from the source. 

Now what I’m hearing though is that in 

order to confirm that your theoretical models 

were reasonable, if not bounding, you also 

took a look at some post-1966 real-life data 

to see what the ratios actually were. And you 

found that your models, at least when you 

compared to that dataset, were claimant 

favorable. 

But as Joe pointed out, there’s 

certainly some limitations for those models in 

that they’re not going to capture some of the 

low energy beta. But I assume in your 

theoretical models the low energy beta was 

captured. Did I ask a question that’s 

tractable? 

MR. ROLFES: Yeah, I certainly think it’s 

tractable, and I think we can take a look at 

some of the refractory radionuclides in order 

to demonstrate our approach. 

DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Yeah, so in a way 
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what I’m hearing is that the post-’67 

empirical data, the real data, I mean, it’s 

information. It gives you some information. 

It has certain limitations. And the issues 

that we raise in our report regarding the loss 

of the refractory materials, I mean, you might 

be enriched in more refractory materials close 

to the site. 

And, of course, this business of the 

distance to between the receptor and the 

source might have an effect on some of the 

ratios you selected. I guess our concern 

would be to be sure that the ratios that you 

have selected are reasonably bounding if you 

were to explicitly consider the refractory 

radionuclides at perhaps somewhat closer 

distances. 

MR. ROLFES: So, Gene Rollins, do you have 

anything to add? Can you make any comments 

about looking into the refractory radionuclide 

dataset, I guess, and determine if there’s any 

significant exposure potentials from lower 

energy beta emitters that we have not 

accounted for? 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): Yes, we’re 
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going to go back into the original 

spreadsheets and add the refractories back in. 

We just didn’t have time to do that before 

this meeting. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Just a couple of comments. 

The places where some of the beta-to-gamma 

ratios might be important, some of the higher 

ones, and the time dependency might be 

important. Actually, first let me say that I 

appreciate the post-1966 verification which 

are the comments that we had raised that 

should be done, and you’ve done it. So that’s 

a good thing, and that provides some level of 

assurance that many of the numbers are 

claimant favorable. And we’d actually judged 

many of the numbers to be claimant favorable 

so that issue, I think, is pretty close to 

being resolved. I think there’s some fine 

print there, but the question of how you can 

back extrapolate is a little bit complicated 

because of the badge question that Joe 

mentioned, the time dependence and that fact 

that the beta-to-gamma ratios may become very 

important when a person is actually caught in 

some kind of incident of cloud as happened, 
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for instance, with Baneberry or in some other 

incidents. We’ve actually compiled a lot of 

those incidents in a different report that we 

sent Jim Melius under the 250-day SEC 

considerations. There’s quite a lot of data 

from actual claimants for circumstances like 

that. And that’s where the, sort of the 

average ratios over a period of years, numbers 

of zeros and so on, may not be so relevant. 

And back extrapolating to pre-’66 might be a 

little bit complicated, not that it couldn’t 

be done, but I think it would need to be done 

at some, the validation would still need to be 

done. 

DR. ROESSLER: I have a question, it’s 

really of Arjun, I guess. If you can identify 

the radionuclides that were pertinent, and if 

you can show that there are none in that range 

where the betas were too low to go through the 

badge and high enough to be biologically 

significant, does that remove the question, 

the whole question here? Or is that just part 

of it? 

MR. ROLFES: Well, I think we’re going to go 

back and look at the population of refractory 
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radionuclides and add that back in to 

determine whether it would, to determine 

whether we would need to assign any correction 

factors essentially or increase a beta-gamma 

ratio. 

Does that answer your question? 

DR. ROESSLER: Well, Arjun didn’t say 

anything but --

DR. MAKHIJANI: I didn’t know there was a 

real question for me. I mean, we --

DR. ROESSLER: I’m just asking if Joe’s 

concern is resolved, does that resolve all of 

your concerns? 

DR. MAKHIJANI: I haven’t actually -- Lynn 

might better address this than me because he’s 

more familiar with radionuclide mixtures. 

Well, I haven’t recently looked at the beta 

energies over time for how the mix of energies 

actually evolved. And NIOSH has used the 

Hicks’ tables and the beta energies would be 

in them. And as I say, we haven’t gone into 

those calculations and tried to verify them. 

So it’s not on the tip of my mind, and so I 

can’t really comment on it. I don’t know. 

Lynn, do you have a ready answer to --
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DR. ANSPAUGH (by Telephone): Well, let me 

make a couple comments. One is, of course, 

you do have to add back the refractories, but 

that’s not enough. You have to add back more 

than the normal amount of refractories because 

they did fall out on the Test Site and never 

made it offsite. So renormalizing the Hicks’ 

tables is not a trivial job, and I don’t know 

if that’s been figured out or not. 

I think in answer to Gen’s question it 

should resolve it. The only thing that makes 

me a little nervous is, of course, any time 

you have a beta emission, you have a full 

range of energies, all the way from zero up to 

the max. And I doubt that that would be an 

important issue, but I just don’t know without 

doing some calculations. 

MS. MUNN: But if we have good records with 

respect to all of the incidents involved, and 

we have decent records as to who was involved, 

then it’s difficult to understand why these 

more esoteric issues are broadly applicable. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Because there were no beta 

dose measurements made until 1966 even though 

they wore badges, so you have to find some way 
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to calculate it. There was some routine beta 

dose exposure, some immersion, some surface, 

you know, all the models that NIOSH has put 

forth, and so there’s both routine and nonroutine exposure that needs to be accounted 

for as best I understand it. 

And I was just cautioning in regard to 

back extrapolation that you have to pay 

special attention to incidents, not that 

that’s the only exposure involved. When 

there’s no measurements, you have to find some 

MS. MUNN: We do have a plethora of 

information about the incidents. 

MR. ROLFES: I mean, the information that 

we’ve reviewed, the 200 files that we 

reviewed, included those that received the 

highest exposures onsite. So once again, the 

highest, they did a photon ratio that we saw 

from ’66 forward was 4.1 to 1. So this time 

period there were incidents that occurred in 

this time period that exposures to fresh 

fission products. There were certainly 

similar exposures in the post-1966, for the 

1966 and later period similar to those that 
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occurred in the earlier time period. So, 

Gene, do you have anything to add to what I 

have stated? 

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

believe so, Mark. Is it possible to see this 

review? 

MR. ROLFES: Is it possible to see it? 

Sure, we can put something together I believe. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Lew, is it useful to think 

about looking at the beta-photon data, the 

photon ratios for the Baneberry incident? I 

presume that many or most or all of those 

people were monitored. 

MR. ROLFES: Those were incorporated in this 

review so like I said, we took the highest 

exposures that were recorded. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: So we’ll find that in your 

review. 

DR. ANSPAUGH (by Telephone): One question 

about these 200 cases you reviewed. Were they 

claimants or were they the highest of the 

whole population? 

MR. ROLFES: These are the highest of our 

claimant population. You know, I would 

probably have to clarify with the person, like 
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I said, I haven’t had too much time to -- I 

don’t know, well, let me ask, is Carol Smith 

on the phone? 

 (no response) 

MR. ROLFES: Okay, I would probably have to 

get clarification because we had gone through 

the top 100 highest exposures, external 

exposures at Nevada Test Site, and then we had 

also expanded our review. But these are only 

for what we have in our claimant population. 

These are not from the entire site. These 

were only from our claimant populations. 

DR. ANSPAUGH (by Telephone): Okay, well I 

think you have a serious question of whether 

or not the claimants are representative of the 

entire population. 

MR. ROLFES: One would expect that there 

would be, so given our sample size we think 

that it should be representative. 

DR. ANSPAUGH (by Telephone): I would very 

much like to see this review. 

MR. ROLFES: Okay, we can see if we can get 

something. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: This was evidently done in 

response to one of our comments so I really 
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appreciate that. 

MR. ROLFES: Sure. 

 MR. PRESLEY: The action item here is SC&A 

and NIOSH are going to work out the wording. 

And who’s going to get something back on 

Comment 19? You know, we had this in our last 

go around that the TBD and the work was 

completed and the working group will review 

for completeness. Again, this is the one that 

I thought that we had taken care of. Can we 

get a response from SC&A and NIOSH as to where 

we stand? Is this going to be completed or do 

we need to do something else with Response 19? 

DR. MAKHIJANI: I’m a little bit unclear as 

to what’s being asked. I mean, we reviewed 

the TBD to the extent that the new materials 

were there after the, and we agreed with some 

things and didn’t agree with other things as 

specified. Afterwards NIOSH has prepared some 

new materials that we haven’t seen and so 

there are some outstanding issues, certainly 

less than there were before. We’d be happy to 

review the compilation but other than that, I 

don’t know what, I’m not clear on what we’re 

being asked to do. 
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 MR. PRESLEY: Are you all ^ for a copy of 

the --

DR. MAKHIJANI: That’s right. I mean, we 

can certainly review that. 

MR. ROLFES: Yeah, as soon as we get a 

formal review put together, this was just a 

summarization of what was done. I’ll have to 

ask for some more formal documentation of the 

review in order to release it for SC&A’s 

review. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, what the other --

sorry. 

 MR. CLAWSON: What type of form will this be 

coming in? Is this just a, will this be kind 

of like a white paper, just -- I apologize. 

I’m just curious which way the form is going 

to come to SC&A. 

MR. ROLFES: Probably in a white paper would 

be the best format. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: The only other thing I can 

think of is Gene was saying that they’re going 

to review the question of refractory to the 

modification of the Hicks’ tables, and Lynn 

opined that this would be a complex matter, 

and I don’t know, there’s nothing on the table 
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for us at the present so far as I can see. 

 MR. CLAWSON: It’d be complicated to 

actually get it done. 

 MR. PRESLEY: When you start changing the 

Hicks’ tables --

DR. MAKHIJANI: That’s right. 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): This is Gene. 

It might be helpful if Dr. Anspaugh could 

suggest a methodology that would be acceptable 

to the Board to add these refractories back 

in, and that way we don’t have to keep going 

around in circles. 

DR. ANSPAUGH (by Telephone): You know, I 

certainly can do that if the Board would like 

me to. 

MS. MUNN: What kind of methodology do you 

have in mind, Gene? Lynn, sorry. 

DR. ANSPAUGH (by Telephone): Well, the 

Hicks’ tables are not just a table of 

radionuclides, they’re a table of 

radionuclides such that they’re normalized to 

external gamma exposure rate. 

MS. MUNN: Yes. 

DR. ANSPAUGH (by Telephone): And this is 

the complication because every radionuclide 
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has a different conversion factor. 

MS. MUNN: Yes. 

DR. ANSPAUGH (by Telephone): And so if you 

want to put the refractories back in, it’s 

fine. You put them back in and then you have 

to re-normalize the table again. And then if 

you want to add in the refractories that were 

dropped out, then you have to go through a 

process to add the refractories in to account 

for that. And then you have to re-normalize 

again to external gamma exposure rate. 

DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Lynn, this is 

John. I was involved in looking at some of 

this Hicks’ tables for some of the tests out 

in the Pacific. And I recall the lookup 

tables that were produced, the so-called 

Hicks’ tables. They often, they always gave 

you the mix of radionuclides with varying 

degrees of refractory material coming out. So 

there was like one set of tables would be zero 

whereby, where they did not take into 

consideration that refractory material came 

out. Another set of tables where there was a 

certain percentage and then a greater 

percentage, usually were three. 
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So what I was thinking that could be 

done was that if the table that you’re using, 

that NIOSH is using, currently basically are 

built around offsite doses, that would mean 

that they probably are using tables where 

there was this -- I forget -- ten percent. I 

forget how they did the metric, but where the 

refractories came out. But the very same 

place where they got those tables probably 

also have the ones with no refractories out. 

DR. ANSPAUGH (by Telephone): Well, 

unfortunately, John, that’s not true. 

DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Oh, okay, because 

I know I’ve seen that with several of the 

tests in the Pacific. I wasn’t sure whether 

the tests are here also. 

DR. ANSPAUGH (by Telephone): Well, Harry 

Hicks, bless his soul, when he was alive, he 

only did that for a few cases because there 

were special requests and the Pacific being 

one of them. 

DR. MAURO (by Telephone): I see. 

DR. ANSPAUGH (by Telephone): And, of 

course, Harry -- well, we were concerned about 

offsite doses. We weren’t concerned about 
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onsite doses. For onsite doses you have to 

allow for the fact that there’s an excess 

amount of refractories onsite. 

DR. NETON: This is Jim Neton. I might 

suggest this seems like one of these issues 

that would benefit from a side technical 

exchange between NIOSH and SC&A including Lynn 

Anspaugh that we can arrange to discuss and 

iron out our differences and commonalities on 

this issue. It sounds like, you know, it’s 

benefited us in the past to sit down and have 

the right technical people sit down and have a 

brief, you know, half hour, hour conversation 

and get the path forward going on this. 

 MR. PRESLEY: This is Bob Presley. Jim, can 

you get that going and then you or Mark, Mark 

in the working group a short synopsis of the 

findings on what we have here. And once we 

iron this out with SC&A and you all then, we 

have you all’s comment back on this one way or 

the other I think it would satisfy this 

Comment. 

DR. NETON: Mark, is that all right? 

MR. ROLFES: Certainly, we can set something 

up. 
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 MR. CLAWSON: But also kind of the path 

forward that we’re going. 

DR. NETON: I think that technical exchange 

could really go a long way. 

 MR. PRESLEY: You start changing those old 

records and things like that as I understand 

that’s going to change everything. 

DR. MAURO (by Telephone): I think the key 

issue here is we might not be able to be, if 

it turns out it is a difficult challenge to 

get the refractories back in, there may be a 

way -- and I’d like to be involved in this 

because there may be a way to address the 

issue that’s at hand. That is, if you were 

to, let’s say we find that we might have some 

difficulties doing a precise reconstruction of 

what the refractories’ contribution would be, 

we might be able to ask ourselves the 

question; however, does that change the betato-photon ratios or is the potential there to 

create, to change the beta-to-photon ratios to 

such an extent that it would invalidate the 

default ratios that have already been adopted. 

So I don’t know whether or not we really have 

to solve the problem explicitly, but just 
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solve it to the degree that gives us a level 

of assurance that the ratios adopted were, in 

fact, appropriately bounding. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: John, I mean, that can be 

part of the agenda though. You and Lynn and 

Jim and whoever from the ORAU side could be 

involved in this. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Can we get this completed in a 

timely manner and get it back to the Board, 

please, in the next two or three weeks? 

DR. NETON: We can certainly try. 

 MR. PRESLEY: All right, that takes care of 

19. We have an action item for SC&A and the 

CDC to work out a mutual response to Comment 

19 and get back to the Board. 

COMMENT 20: INTENTIONAL NON-USE OF BADGES 

Comment 20 is the revised TBD provides 

no evidence that the issue on non-use of 

badges was actually investigated. And I’m 

going to let -- Arjun, do you have anything to 

say on this? 

DR. MAKHIJANI: This was maybe the most 

difficult part of the review for us and for me 

because, well, not only has the question of 

are there real criteria for when you’re going 
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to accept site expert evidence and when you’re 

not, but because of a particular exchange that 

occurred at Rocky Flats that I felt at the 

time was rather problematic and called at 

least the attention of some people at the time 

to it, which is at Rocky Flats there were 

written documents from the time that said 

thorium strikes were done in Building 71. 

And NIOSH said we have a site expert 

who remembers today that 30 years ago thorium 

strikes were done in Building 81. And the 

document should be disregarded even though it 

was a document from the time because it was 

written by an investigation team that wasn’t 

actually doing the work. So there we have a 

case where NIOSH’s statement was that site 

expert evidence should be accepted even though 

it’s a 40-year memory over and above an 

official classified investigation that was 

done three weeks after the event in question. 

And I felt very uncomfortable that 

this was being proposed. I didn’t say 

anything about it because it wasn’t 

particularly appropriate at the time other 

than in private. But I have said from the 
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beginning in this case that the person who was 

hired as the principal Health Physicist had 

been very, very clear -- unfortunately, he has 

passed on -- his interview was very clearly 

documented. 

This is also supported by worker 

evidence. It is supported by hazard pay 

policies. There’s been many presentations or 

several presentations to the Board by 

claimants and their families that this, there 

was not a policy of non-use of badges, but the 

pay policies and other pressures of work 

seemed to encourage this. There’s been a 

substantial amount of uncontradicted evidence 

that there was a practice of non-use of badges 

even though it was clearly not approved, 

people were required to wear their badges. 

That’s not the question. And we, I 

find it quite hard at this time given what has 

transpired that NIOSH’s position seems to be 

that because it was the policy, somehow the 

site expert evidence, even though 

uncontradicted by documents other than it was 

policy. Nobody’s disputing that it was policy 

to wear the badge. 
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This is a rather problematic thing, 

and it would be very helpful to have some 

guidance as to when you accept site expert 

evidence, and when you don’t because this 

issue is going to keep coming up. And it has 

come up not only on the part of SC&A, it has 

come up on the part of many presentations that 

we’ve made to the Board. And it has come up 

in other contexts in terms of how site expert 

and worker evidence is being treated. 

DR. NETON: I don’t see anything in this 

response that says that they did not accept 

the idea the badges weren’t worn. I don’t see 

anywhere where it says that in here. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: To me I read it as a 

rejection of the idea that it was a systemic 

problem until the mid-‘60s. 

DR. NETON: Well now that’s different. 

Whether it’s a systemic, prevalence is the 

issue, not whether they were worn or not. 

I don’t see your argument carries any 

water that we flatly rejected the testimony or 

the assertion of a Health Physicist that 

badges weren’t worn. I think we accept that. 

I think it’s just a matter now what is the 
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prevalence. How prevalent was it, and was it 

sufficiently prevalent to invalidate any 

potential coworker model that could be 

developed. I think that’s the real issue 

here. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, it’s not just a 

question of coworker models, it’s a question 

of the validity of the individual data 

themselves because if the workers were taking 

off their badges, then how valid are the 

individual dose --

DR. NETON: That’s my point. That’s why I 

said it’s an issue of prevalence. If it’s one 

or two isolated instances, and we have a large 

cadre of data, are those isolated instances 

sufficient to invalidate at least the coworker 

models because we would essentially treat 

those individuals as unmonitored. 

If it could be established those 

people were not monitored, then we would just 

assume that they didn’t have any monitoring 

and apply a coworker model, then it gets down 

to prevalence. And I don’t know how much 

documented evidence in terms of the NTS we 

have if this was a rampant issue. 
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The one expert that we interviewed 

told us that in the forward areas it was 

pretty prevalent. I don’t, you know, no one 

has put a number to it, so many percent, so 

many times, and I don’t know that that can be 

done. In the beginning when this issue first 

came up, I believe maybe in the very first 

meeting, NIOSH proposed to do a statistical 

task in terms of review of claimant data. I 

don’t know that that’s ever been done. 

MR. ELLIOTT: I think it was suggested. You 

all suggested or proposed it, but we pointed 

to our rule language that indicates how we 

validate data. We validate it based on trend 

analysis. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: In any case, so far as we 

have been able to determine this wasn’t just 

an isolated, there’s evidence that this wasn’t 

just an isolated thing to be treated in an 

isolated manner. And the way I read the TBD, 

and it was reviewed internally, this is being 

treated as if it is an isolated case here and 

there that can be dealt with by individual and 

claimant file examination. That’s an issue 

obviously that the Board --
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 MR. PRESLEY: My stand on this is, you know, 

we have talked about this at Rocky Flats and 

talked and talked and talked. We still don’t 

have a firm agreement one way or the other. 

Yes, there are isolated issues. I think 

everybody agrees to that, but that’s at Rocky 

Flats. This is at NTS. 

From my own personal experience at 

NTS, you wore your badge. You didn’t just get 

checked at the gate when you came in in the 

morning. There was a guard at the sites where 

you went in, and it was beat into your head 

that you wore that badge. And if somebody 

noticed you’d either dropped the badge, or you 

didn’t have a badge on, then somebody 

questioned you at that point as to why you 

were there. 

You didn’t have your badge on, you 

were in trouble. It was a Security issue. 

And the problem with the people not wearing 

their badges, my main point is that it may be 

an isolated case, but I don’t think it was 

anywhere near a large number of people. 

MR. ROLFES: Based on the additional 

interview that we did, there was also 
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information that he had heard this, that there 

were various stories about this practice, 

about people intentionally exposing their 

badges as well as intentionally leaving their 

badges, you know, in a place where it wouldn’t 

be exposed. And he said that he was never 

able to confirm that the practice existed in 

fact. 

He had never seen any definitive proof 

of it, but it was more hearsay that he had 

heard of stories that were, in fact, you know, 

stories that were passed on between workers. 

We know that, for a fact, that it was 

certainly a serious security infraction if you 

were caught without a badge. 

But the point is whether the practice 

occurred or not, it was not condoned by 

management or required by management. We do, 

in fact, have the methodology, the coworker 

dose information that we can use to 

reconstruct doses on a case-by-case basis. 

MR. CHEW: I would like to add, too, Arjun, 

in working with the construction chapter we 

obviously looked at dosimetry records. Let’s 

take a look at the reasons here. The reason 
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for taking off your badge and not wearing your 

badge is that you might think you were coming 

up to a regulatory limit. 

And we really look at the doses that 

were involved. The actual data didn’t even 

come close to that, you know, at the Nevada 

Test Site. If five rem was the limit, if you 

were receiving about one or two, because we 

have a large database of that, so there’s 

really no reason for the people to take off 

the badge. 

If you were coming close to the 

regulatory limit, if you were working, and you 

wanted to continue working because you were 

reaching the regulatory limit, then, yeah, 

maybe some issues of either management or 

yourself would like to continue to work would 

allow you to continue to work. There’s really 

no evidence to support that. 

 MR. CLAWSON: I’d like to be able to say 

something, too, because when we went to the 

Nevada Test Site with our family, we had an 

extremely interesting tour. The person that 

was with was very, very good, very, very 

knowledgeable, no problems with any of them. 
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He was asked this exact question. And his 

comment was, no, it was not condoned, but the 

workforce looked at as if they were apart the 

war, too. 

And in his comment, he made the 

comment and said, I would never let a badge 

get between me and getting this accomplished 

period, and that’s all I’m going to say. 

Because from that standpoint, too, is that 

they did, it was drilled into them that they 

could not, don’t do your badges. You’ve got 

to have your badges and everything else like 

that, and this is a conscious decision and so 

forth. 

But his comment of I will not allow a 

badge to get in my way of completing or 

finishing this. Because, you’re right, the 

regulatory limits or the weekly limits or 

whatever like that because I can tell you 

today, and it’s by their choice, that some 

people are doing these things, construction 

side, our side, because basically to be able 

to bring finish to a lot of jobs that for 

people to go in and start up where they’ve 

left off, they would receive just as much 
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doses as what this person has. 

There’s a lot of aspects to this, and 

I just, I agree on both sides of this. I’m 

just, it seems like every once in awhile we 

bounce back and forth that we are taking 

documentation that, okay, we’re going to take 

documentation this time, but now over here 

we’re going to use area experts and back and 

forth. These can’t be bypassed or 

sidestepped, and we need to really look at 

this because this is not just on NTS. This is 

on every site. 

DR. ANSPAUGH (by Telephone): This is Lynn 

Anspaugh. I’d like to say a few words about 

this. First of all I never saw anybody not 

wear his badge, but I was kind of late on the 

scene. But when I had a badge, I frequently 

took it apart just to look at it, and you can 

very easily take your film badge out of that 

badge or your TLD or whatever, and put it 

someplace else so you don’t have a Security 

problem. 

The other thing is I think there were 

certain periods of time and certain groups of 

workers who may have felt the need to do this, 
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and that would have gone back to a period of 

time when there was really an intense push to 

finish a lot of tests in a short period of 

time. We felt we were in a major 

confrontation, competition with the Soviets. 

And I think if you go back and look at this 

anecdotal data, you’ll find that there are 

only a few classes of workers where this 

really was likely to have been an issue. 

One was the Rad Safe workers who were 

on the re-entry teams. Another one was the 

tunnel workers who were being pushed very, 

very hard to get ready for the next test, and 

it was very clear to these people that if they 

went over the limit, they got laid off and 

maybe they didn’t get to work for a long 

period of time. So I think you really could 

narrow down this problem. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Just a couple things, the 

site expert interview we have, just to address 

what Mr. Presley was saying, is he felt that 

this problem stopped around the time that the 

joint security badge, film badge was issued in 

1966. 

By that time it was largely stopped 
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because, for the reason you said, presumably 

for the reason that you said. People would 

have found it difficult to be onsite without 

their security badge, but before that time it 

was possible to have your security and not 

have your film badge. And that would also 

correspond to what Lynn was saying. 

To my memory, and this is obviously my 

memory deference to Mark’s comment yesterday, 

but the comments that the Board has received, 

and what we have seen to this effect are in 

these groups of workers including in the 

interview that I did where the person himself 

said that he had done it himself even though. 

He was part of the Rad Safe team, and through 

the clouds, you know, measuring radioactivity 

and so on. So he was in the front line for a 

good period of time. And we’ve also heard 

this from tunnel workers. So I think it may 

be possible to focus this issue on those 

groups of workers that were involved and on a 

certain time period. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Anybody got a path forward? 

MS. MUNN: ^ 

 MR. CLAWSON: Did you say none? 
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MS. MUNN: ^ 

 MR. PRESLEY: Let’s decide what we’re going 

to do here on this one. 

 DR. WADE: Well, if you take Arjun’s comment 

as a starting point, so we have Rad Safe 

workers, tunnel workers prior to 1966. Is 

there any way to statistically or in any other 

way get a sense of whether or not this was a 

prevalent problem? Is there a way to approach 

by looking at the number of zeros? I mean, is 

there a way? 

MR. ROLFES: Sure, we’ve proposed previously 

if you look at an individual’s case file to 

determine whether they exceeded or, you know, 

approached an administrative limit in a give 

quarter. For example, if a Rad worker went 

into a tunnel, received 3R working in that 

quarter in that tunnel, went in again. The 

next quarter received another 3R or whatever 

the administrative limits are at the time 

period, of the relevant time period. 

And then suddenly we notice a drop off 

indicating that there was no dose received 

from the following quarter, one could 

obviously look at the previous three quarters 
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and assign -- for example, if we had 

indication that a badge was, in fact, removed 

and that they were working in the work area, 

we could assign the same dose, we could assign 

the highest dose received in the first three 

quarters of the year. 

So it is something that we can 

certainly account for I believe. But we would 

have to review that information on a case-bycase basis. And I think that we had 

incorporated a statement like that because of 

SC&A’s request. I believe that we had, in 

fact, incorporated that statement in the 

external dose TBD. 

Gene? 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): That’s correct. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: It was a case-by-case basis; 

my response was that this is not a case-bycase issue. 

DR. NETON: I think in line with what 

Arjun’s raised here though, we can go back. I 

don’t know what can be done with this other 

than SC&A has sharpened their pencil a little 

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class of workers between, in this case up to 
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’66, there were tunnel workers and re-entry 

workers and I’m not sure --

MR. ELLIOTT: Well, SC&A look at this and 

look at this class of workers and tell us if 

you see something there. We think our 

approach is sound, and we don’t see anything 

as we go through these individual dose 

reconstructions. If we find, as Mark has 

outlined, where there’s a trend that looks to 

us like there’s something amiss in the history 

of the dose and the employment, then we take 

action on that. And that’s one of the ways we 

validate data. 

So I would ask if SC&A is so convinced 

that there’s something here, let’s see a 

little bit more of that. What is it? Is it 

the class? Can you tell us how that 

particular category of worker is affected? Is 

it pervasive? Is it all this one set of 

workers that had to go in and, the carpenters 

who went back in and took down the barriers 

that were sitting there? I don’t know. 

I can envision. I truly believe that 

this happened. I believe that there are 

situations where a worker said I don’t need to 
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wear this badge. Nobody’s looking over my 

shoulder. I’m on the site. I’ve got to do 

the job today. I’m maybe getting close to my 

limit so I’m going to set this badge aside. 

I’m pretty sure that happened. But I don’t 

believe it happened on a wide-scale basis 

across the site. 

I think it was situation dependent. 

That’s my own personal belief. So if that’s 

the case, does our averaging, does our 

approaches toward reconstructing dose become 

impaired by this practice? And we’re saying 

to you that we think we can address that in 

our approaches. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, this, a couple of 

things. I think the way you put it 

misconstrues the problem, at least as I’ve 

tried to put it on the table. The idea that 

this is an occasional one-off thing 

contradicts the site expert evidence that we 

got in an interview, and even more than one. 

And that has also been presented before the 

Board. So that, I think, is an issue, in my 

opinion -- now, the working group and the 

Board may dismiss this, and then I will just 
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not raise it any more. In my opinion there’s 

a question of what are the criteria by which 

site expert evidence is to be accepted? Is it 

-- right now, the appearance -- well, I’m not 

going to characterize it. 

MR. ROLFES: Once again, all the sources of 

information must be considered. 

MR. ELLIOTT: And we have site experts that 

essentially contradict the assertions that 

other site experts make. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: So we’ve had, so right now I 

am not clear on whether we have a set of 

criteria by which we’re going to accept, or by 

which NIOSH accepts site expert evidence. And 

when there’s contradictory evidence, do you 

accept the evidence that you feel comfortable 

with because it agrees with how you’re doing 

dose reconstruction currently? Or do you reevaluate that? 

MR. ELLIOTT: We accept the weight of the 

evidence. We look at all of the information 

we have at hand, and we make a decision upon 

that basis. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: And that’s why what happened 

at Rocky Flats truly puzzled me. Is how can 
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you set aside documents from the time for a 

40-year memory of a person who wasn’t even 

present and didn’t even give a document? 

DR. NETON: I don’t want to rehash that 

whole Rocky Flats. If you recall, the 

building that was cited in that report was 

sort of ancillary to the report. It wasn’t 

the subject of the report, so it was not 

really under investigation. It was just 

included as sort of a, almost like a -- I 

don’t want to mischaracterize it -- but as a 

side note in that report. It was not the 

focus of the investigation. 

So it was quite possible that that was 

not researched, and it was just misquoted. 

That’s the weight of the evidence you have to 

look at, into what context that building was 

cited and why. You’re portraying as if it was 

the focus of the investigation. It was not. 

In the report it’s an ancillary quotation. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: I did not say --

DR. NETON: That’s what I’m saying though. 

You have to look at the weight of the evidence 

like Larry suggested. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: I’m presenting a question as 
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I saw it. The weight of the evidence -- and I 

felt it very serious at the time, and I still 

do feel it very serious. And this is a 

problem that arises in a lot of different 

contexts, and I’m not the only one certainly 

to bring it. It’s a widespread perception 

that NIOSH doesn’t listen to certain groups of 

people. And I think even unfairly very often 

negatively affected your program because I can 

see when you are listening or when you are 

being fair, people may still have the 

perception that you’re not listening. 

DR. NETON: There will always be someone 

upset because there’s two sides on every 

issue. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Right. So I’m just trying 

to be as objective as I can in this situation 

which obviously there’s a question of judgment 

involved. We have there a situation where on 

the datasheets themselves, there was no 

indication that the thorium strikes took place 

there. The data were just data without a 

mention of the radionuclide. You had two 

documents, one history and one contemporary 

document from that time that both mentioned 
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exactly the same thing, that it happened in a 

different building than what NIOSH was 

asserting. And opposed to all of that you had 

one person who was there at the time and 

remembering from 40 years before that it 

happened in a certain building. Okay. I 

think that this certainly calls for some 

question as to what are the criteria because 

I’m very puzzled because if NIOSH accepts that 

MR. ELLIOTT: We have spoken to this. We’ve 

already provided an answer to this issue in 

the Rocky Flats deliberation. We explained, I 

think -- I don’t have the details in front of 

me. I’d have to refresh my memory, but as Jim 

said, and I think others here can confirm, 

we’ve explained this. We look at all of the 

information at hand. We take all of that in 

account, and yes, we arrived where we arrived, 

and we think for good reason. 

I’m sorry if people out there feel 

that we are not listening, but we are doing 

our best to not only listen and then to act. 

And I know we can improve upon that, and we’re 

striving to do so. It’s clearly written in 
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our regulation. It’s clearly exhibited, I 

feel, in our policy, and I hope it’s becoming 

clearer in our practices that we account for 

all information. We take the weight of the 

evidence, and we have to decide upon that. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, I’m not representing 

anybody except the team that I led to do this. 

And, John, you might stop me if you think I’m 

out of order here, but I definitely concluded 

the contrary in the case of Rocky Flats. In 

my profession judgment I felt that the 

conclusion that NIOSH arrived at in regard to 

the weight of evidence as to where this thing 

happened was not warranted. There needed to 

be more evidence, at least something that said 

thorium than a 40-year old memory of somebody 

who was there. Because 40-year old memory 

have been treated in a different way in other 

contexts. Oh, it was long time ago, and it’s 

very hard to remember. And that has --

MR. ELLIOTT: And I think we’ve said that. 

We understand that, but we have not used that 

as a crutch or an excuse. 

 MR. PRESLEY: At this point what we’re 

discussing is the NTS site profile, not the 
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Rocky Flats. We have had problems with this 

in the past. What I see at NTS is that they 

have the data to do the coworker models for 

the people that they cannot find data on. 

Now, and I’m happy with that. 

If somebody wants to come up and say 

working group, you all need to make a 

recommendation to the full Board that somebody 

comes back and looks at this problem as a 

different working group looking at non-badge 

use on all sites, I have no problem with that. 

What we’re looking at here is the NTS site, 

and I really think that we have the data to do 

what we want to do on this site. Rocky to me 

is a total different question. Now, if I’m 

out of order, somebody say that, but right now 

that’s my point. 

 MR. CLAWSON: Was it Baker, the interview 

with the Health Physicist down there? The one 

that has just passed? 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, it’s published in our 

site profile review, and I can show it to you. 

DR. ROESSLER: We don’t need to mention 

names. 

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things stated in there that have to be 

addressed with that. And you, I don’t think 

that there is in anybody’s point of view, 

we’re all trying to do the same job, and we’re 

trying to do it the best we can because all of 

us basically report back to the people, the 

claimants. 

And I don’t think that anybody’s 

purposely trying to address it towards that 

someone isn’t doing their job. But we do 

still have to address the comments that are 

made. And every time we get into this, this 

keeps coming up, and we’ve got to be able to 

tell the petitioners how we’ve addressed this. 

Because this isn’t just this site. I know 

this is the one we’re focusing on, but we have 

to be able to address this in some way. 

 DR. WADE: Now I can, just as a commonsense 

individual, I can propose two ways to address 

it. But let’s define some parameters. Again, 

Arjun talks about pre-’66 two classes of 

workers, Rad Safe workers and tunnel workers. 

Jim says very appropriately that it becomes an 

issue of the preponderance of the evidence. 

How large a problem is this? 
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We say, commonsense people say, you 

can use coworker models but in order to use 

those coworker models you have to have 

confidence in those models. And that means 

that there has to be sufficient number of data 

points that you build those models on that you 

can rely upon. This is a pervasive problem 

and maybe you don’t have that. So one way to 

look at this is to try and address the issue 

is are the coworker models robust in light of 

this problem? And I don’t know how you do 

that, but that’s one intellectual way to do 

this. 

The other way is to just take the sort 

of the lawyerly approach is, this is an issue 

of the preponderance of the evidence and have 

someone prepare a document that lays out the 

evidence and draws a conclusion and let people 

debate that. So I think you have two classic 

approaches if the work group wants to take an 

approach or the work group could decide it’s 

comfortable on this. 

But I sense in the work group that 

there is still some division and there needs 

to be something done to put this issue to 
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rest. I would hate to punt this and then come 

to face the 11th hour of the SEC determination 

and have this issue in front of us. 

I think there’s time now to work on 

it, and I see two ways: to determine if the 

coworker models are robust enough given the 

potential presence of this problem or lay out 

the arguments with the preponderance of the 

evidence and see who, what side prevails. 

Does that make sense? So is there a way to 

do, there’s a way to do the second obviously. 

MR. ELLIOTT: To do both, I think the 

former, if that were to be done, that would be 

us. NIOSH should defend its coworker model 

and the robustness of that. If it’s the 

latter, to develop the argument for why this 

should be, is a concern, then I think that’s 

something the working group should either 

develop or have SC&A do. 

 DR. WADE: Arjun, do you understand what I’m 

saying? Are you comfortable with those 

approaches? 

DR. MAKHIJANI: I’m not sure about the 

preponderance of the evidence and how one 

would go about doing it even, you know, the 
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claimant population is first of all a subset 

of the people who were there, and we’re 

talking about a pretty restricted period. So 

I would have to consult with people like Lynn 

and others. 

 DR. WADE: Yeah, what you do is just lay on 

the table in some room the evidence. You’d 

have people document what it is and then draw 

a logical conclusion from it. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: The evidence in terms of the 

expert evidence and the policies that were at 

the Test Site in terms of the hazard pay 

policies, we discussed at some length in the 

site profile. In order to go beyond that into 

the numbers I really don’t know sitting here 

how you would develop that from the population 

that worked at the Test Site. Because, I 

mean, this came up earlier today that we don’t 

know how representative the claimant 

population is and you can’t really establish 

that. You can assume it’s representative 

because it’s large. And in this case you’re 

talking about two small groups of workers. At 

least as I sit here I can’t give you an 

instant response as to how I would do it. I’d 
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be happy to take it back and talk about it and 

send you a proposal. 

DR. NETON: I’m against making more work for 

anybody, but it seems to me the technical 

evaluation would be worth looking at before we 

went to this preponderance of the evidence 

issue. I think the technical evaluation can 

shed some light on it, and they actually feed 

into the preponderance of the evidence. 

 DR. WADE: I think that’s exactly the way it 

should proceed. 

DR. NETON: And it seems that we’ve got a 

couple small groups of workers here, and 

hearing what Mel said that, and I think it’s 

probably true, that we have a small subset to 

begin with. And then probably very few 

workers typically in these populations 

approach the regulatory limits. So now you’re 

even looking at a smaller subset. I don’t 

know how far down you go, but let’s say so 

many people above a certain rem. 

And then you can start looking, okay, 

how many people does that potentially affect, 

maybe not many to begin with. And then you 

can look at those and look at the distribution 
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of the coworkers and see is there, indeed, 

some curvature in this cumulative probability 

of distribution? Probably going to be as well 

documented if that happens. As workers 

approach the administrative limit, they take 

them out of the workplace. But how bad does 

that curvature occur and how many workers? 

I mean, we can put some light on this 

issue based on these more narrow focused 

timeframe and the worker population and see 

what shows up. I can’t --

MR. ELLIOTT: Can we do that not on our 

claimant population but on the data that NTS 

holds? 

DR. NETON: Yeah, I think --

MR. ROLFES: What we currently have in our 

coworker external dose table it is a -- let’s 

see --

Gene, could you please answer Larry’s 

question regarding reviewing the entire set of 

all of NTS external dosimetry data? Do we 

have access to data that would allow such a 

review? 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): As I understand 

it, we’ve had difficulty retrieving 
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information that is not claimant related. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Well, DOE has to provide us 

coworker data which is not claimant-related 

data. It is coworker data. It’s data 

relevant to a category of workers at the site 

whether it’s all workers or the subcategory. 

And so if we’re having trouble, we’ll talk to 

DOE about that. 

DR. NETON: Let me ask the question, what, 

do you recall what the coworker data is based 

on right now? 

MR. ROLFES: Well, we currently have this 

basically a number of personnel that received 

a given dose by year, so it’s essentially the 

same information which does incorporate all 

individuals that worked at the Test Site, and 

that is currently in the TBD. And I believe 

we had provided some discussion that this was 

added to the site profile to address these 

situations where an individual was potentially 

not using their badge. 

DR. NETON: I think we need to take a look 

at what we have. 

MR. ELLIOTT: ^ DeMers have always been 

helpful to us. 
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DR. NETON: I don’t want to commit NIOSH to 

doing a several month investigation here, but 

since we’ve got a three-year time window we’re 

looking at possibly with a couple selected 

worker populations, it might, famous last 

words, it shouldn’t take that long. Now if 

it’s going to be a major research effort, we 

might need to revisit that and say, you know, 

take a different tactic. But it’s worth 

looking at technically. Let’s look at the 

data and see what we can find. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Okay, on Comment 20 then NIOSH 

is going to look at the coworker tables and 

data and get back to the Board with some type 

of a recommendation on this non-badge uses. 

Is that correct? 

MR. ROLFES: Now is this specific to a 

certain timeframe then? 

 MR. PRESLEY: Before 1966. 

DR. NETON: Clearly we’ll look at the 

highest exposed workers because that’s the 

only population this really affects, people 

who have low dose are not going to be inclined 

to take their badges off unless people want to 

go there. 
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MR. ELLIOTT: That’s based on the assumption 

that the primary motivation is to not get 

burned out. 

DR. NETON: That’s correct, and that’s --

MR. ELLIOTT: And there are other 

motivations to not wear your badge. We 

recognize that, but the primary one we assume 

to be that you don’t want to get burned out. 

I expect you’ve got readings in the third or 

fourth quarters in particular, you’ll see a 

drop. 

DR. NETON: We looked at this, I think, at 

Rocky Flats, and it was fairly inconclusive 

looking at the technical data, looking at the 

actual, but we were looking at a much broader, 

we cast a much broader net there. Here if we 

focus it a little more narrowly, maybe it’ll 

be easier to look at. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Is this concept acceptable to 

the working group? 

MS. MUNN: Yes. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Okay, and then we will get 

back on this subject at some point in time. 

Let’s break, and we will start at 1:30 

on Comment 21. Is that all right? Be back 
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here at 1:30? 

 DR. WADE: We’re going to break the line 

gentle people, and we’ll call back in a little 

bit before 1:30. Thank you. 

(Whereupon, the work group recessed for 

lunch from 12:35 p.m. until 1:35 p.m.) 

 DR. WADE: Hello, this is the work group 

conference room. We’re just about ready to 

begin. Can anybody hear my voice out there? 

MR. RAFKY (by Telephone): This is Michael 

Rafky. I can hear you. 

 DR. WADE: Thank you, Michael. We’re about 

to begin. 

Robert, are you ready? 

 MR. PRESLEY: Yes, sir. 

 DR. WADE: Okay, here we go. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Do we want to go and see who’s 

on the line again before we start? 

 DR. WADE: Well, we could ask NIOSH and ORAU 

folks on the line to identify themselves, 

please. 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): Gene Rollins is 

here. 

 DR. WADE: Hi, Gene. 

Others? NIOSH/ORAU? 
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 (no response) 

 DR. WADE: SC&A? 

MR. ZLOTNICKI (by Telephone): Joe Zlotnicki 

here. 

 DR. WADE: Hello. 

Other SC&A? 

 (no response) 

 DR. WADE: I’m sure John Mauro will be 

joining us. I was just on the phone with him. 

Do we have workers, petitioners, their 

representatives on the line? 

 (no response) 

 DR. WADE: Other feds on the line? 

MR. RAFKY (by Telephone): Michael Rafky 

again, Lew. 

 DR. WADE: Hi, Michael. 

Board members? 

 (no response) 

 DR. WADE: Anybody else who wants to be 

identified? 

MR. SMITH (by Telephone): Billy Smith with 

Chew. 

 DR. WADE: Okay. 

MR. ROLFES: Before we begin I believe Billy 

Smith might want to add some comments. He was 
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a former Nevada Test Site Health Physicist. 

Billy, would you like to make any 

comments in regards to our earlier 

discussions? 

MR. SMITH (by Telephone): Yes, I would. 

Can you hear me? 

MR. ROLFES: Yes, we can. 

MR. SMITH (by Telephone): Yes, I would. In 

regards to the discussion that Arjun was 

having regarding the prevalence of employees 

removing their dosimeters, in the 27 years 

that I was at the NTS, and I was involved in 

the Health and Safety Program for all that 

time. I began my career as a tunnel Health 

Physicist, and most of the time I spent there 

was working with the radiation monitors and 

the miners. 

And I can say that from 1966 on, I 

never experienced one occasion where anybody 

had to remove their dosimeter in order to do 

work. I can’t even remember anybody even 

being reported as having removed their 

dosimeter at that particular time. Now one of 

the things that I do know is that whenever 

workers, including miners or any other 
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construction workers, had to work in a 

radiological area, they were accompanied by 

what we called at that time radiation 

monitors. Now we call them RCTs. 

So these workers would have been 

people who would have received probably the 

highest external or internal exposures that 

any other worker at the Nevada Test Site would 

have experienced. So it would probably be 

good to do a coworker study that would allow 

looking at the radiation monitors for any 

particular era and see what kind of doses they 

got and see whether or not you can determine 

from that that whether or not the practice of 

people removing their badges might have been 

in use. But again to my knowledge that never 

happened. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Billy, this is Bob Presley. 

How are you? 

MR. SMITH (by Telephone): Yes, Bob, just 

fine, thank you. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Could you supply us with some 

names of individuals between 1959 and 1966 

that might have been the persons in question 

at the test site? Is it at all possible for 
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you to do that? 

MR. ELLIOTT: Not over the phone. 

MR. SMITH (by Telephone): No, I understand 

that. Bob, I don’t know. Like I said, I 

don’t know of anybody who was ever reported by 

name to have done that. The only thing that I 

can tell you is this. Is that the dosimetry 

record system has a difficult time retrieving 

information if it’s not for a claimant. So we 

would have to go to the personnel records and 

identify people who were classified as 

radiation monitors and then have the dosimetry 

people to retrieve those records of those 

people to see what kind of exposures they may 

have gotten. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Bill, we’ll do that. 

MR. SMITH (by Telephone): Another, well, 

there was one other comment that I’d like to 

make. There was a comment John made this 

morning about the ratio for the beta versus 

gamma on the dosimeters, and he was concerned 

about the fact that the wrapper around the 

film badge was too thick to allow any 

measurements of beta particles below 500 keV. 

That may have been true for those 
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early dosimeters, but an interesting question 

that I have regarding his question is then how 

could people have gotten low energy beta 

exposures since they were wearing clothing 

whether it was anti-contamination clothing or 

personal clothing? 

 MR. PRESLEY: Well taken. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Joe, I think that question 

was directed at you. 

MR. ZLOTNICKI (by Telephone): Well, I think 

the answer is with beta you get into a, 

obviously depending on the site of the cancer, 

but clearly there are likely to be situations 

where some of the skin of the body is exposed, 

most notably the face, but possibly the 

forearms and hands in some situations as well. 

MR. SMITH (by Telephone): Yes, I agree. 

MR. ZLOTNICKI (by Telephone): And I don’t 

know if people wore shorts there or not when 

they were in hot zones in hot weather. I have 

no idea. ^ they got a partial, potentially 

got a partial skin exposure, not a whole skin. 

MR. SMITH (by Telephone): No, shorts were 

not allowed. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Not at all. 
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MR. RICH: Any time there was significant 

exposures to mixed fission products, 

contamination control clothing including face 

shields and most often the respiratory 

protection. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Bill, thank you very much for 

your comments. We appreciate that. 

MR. SMITH (by Telephone): Okay, I’ll be 

here if you need to ask me any questions. 

I’ll be more than glad to give you the benefit 

of what I’ve experienced. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Thank you, sir. 

COMMENT 21: EXTREMITY DOSIMETRY 

Let’s start again with the matrix. We 

left off at 21. Twenty-one has to do with 

extremity monitoring. Data appears to exist 

from ’69 onward. There were only rare 

instances of monitoring prior to that time. 

The response on this is -- Arjun, do you want 

to --

DR. MAKHIJANI: I think from 1967 onward it 

doesn’t seem to be an issue. This was an 

issue before 1967, and I don’t think, well, 

the status that we concluded from the TBD 

review was extremity monitoring data appeared 
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to be in use from 1967 onward. There were 

only rare instances of monitoring prior to 

that time. NIOSH has not proposed a dose 

reconstruction method to deal with this issue 

for the pre-1967 period. 

So we didn’t see anything new in the 

TBD for the pre-1967 period. 

MR. ROLFES: Those people that were doing 

hands-on work with radioactive components such 

as people that were handling core samples or 

people that were doing the device assembly 

would have been the ones with the highest 

potential for exposure to their extremities. 

In looking through NOCTS we looked through 

device assembly workers at Nevada Test Site, 

and neither of those two individuals we 

located had skin cancers of the extremities 

making the need for those two individuals 

moot. We didn’t need to do an extremity dose 

reconstruction of these two cases. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Were there data in your 

files for extremity monitoring? 

MR. ROLFES: We wouldn’t need the extremity 

monitoring data if we didn’t have a cancer to 

reconstruct on the extremity though. 
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DR. MAKHIJANI: No, no, I mean that’s, the 

cancer --

MR. ROLFES: But as ^ I didn’t look, sir. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Okay, the action on this is 

the evaluation of extremity dose for skin 

cancer is discussed in OTIB-0017. Has this 

been reviewed? 

DR. MAKHIJANI: I’m not with you on that 

one. 

DR. ROESSLER: Arjun, he’s using the --

 DR. WADE: Response 21. 

 MR. PRESLEY: On page 12, I’m sorry, page 

13. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Does OTIB-0017 discuss how 

to evaluate it in the absence of any data or, 

I’m not familiar with OTIB-0017. 

John, are you familiar with OTIB-0017? 

 (no response) 

MR. ROLFES: Gene Rollins, could we have you 

explain what we have incorporated into the 

matrix here? We put a statement in the matrix 

that says evaluation of extremity skin dose is 

discussed in OTIB-0017. Could you please 

elaborate on that? 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): I’m not sure 
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that I can. Where are you reading this from? 

MR. ROLFES: We’re back onto the full matrix 

on page 13 of 14 under response number 21. 

We’ve got a statement in there regarding the 

evaluation of extremity dose for skin cancer 

which is discussed in TIB-0017. And then we 

also have a statement that says the ORAU team 

Technical Basis external one, Section 6.4.2.6, 

page 51, as well as Section 6.5.2 on page 59, 

have discussion of this. 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): I’m not sure 

why the reference to OTIB-0017 would be 

applicable. That’s how we determine shallow 

dose, and I don’t know how. I don’t know why 

that was put into the matrix. 

MS. MUNN: Well, and in any case, this item 

is really complete. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Yes. 

MS. MUNN: We have indicated that it was 

done. That was just additional information I 

think. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Well, we need to look and see 

if this comment we put in here is appropriate 

for this response or not. And if it’s not, we 

should sure seek its deletion. If it is, we 
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should explain why we think it is. 

MR. ROLFES: It may just be that additional 

details on the interpretation of dosimetry 

records for assigning shallow dose is 

discussed in this TIB. 

DR. ROESSLER: On the shorter matrix there’s 

more information. It refers to the interview 

with Bruce Church. 

MR. ROLFES: Yes, we did specifically ask 

Bruce about -- let me take a look and see 

where we -- I specifically asked him what do 

you recall regarding neutron on extremity 

dosimetry for assembly workers, weapons 

developers and scientists tracking specific 

programs. He indicated that they did 

extremity and neutron dosimetry at NTS and at 

the labs. There was a potential for neutron 

dose for weapon developers. Extremity 

dosimetry was used as needed. Not a lot of 

people required neutron monitoring. And the 

facility workers also, in fact, had extremity 

monitoring. Let’s see, the number of people 

that would have been involved in the final 

assembly of a weapon, for a device to be 

tested was very, very few. 
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MR. RICH: This was Security control. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Yes. Well, it was also 

controlled by the --

MR. ELLIOTT: Probably enough said. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Okay, the response to that is 

HHS is going to look at OTIB-0017 and see what 

the, why it was in there. If it wasn’t, then 

we will take it out. And I see absolutely no 

response from the Board. This will be gone 

over when we do the complete review for 

completeness. Anybody have anything? 

DR. ROESSLER: What about SC&A? Is there 

anything left hanging on this one? 

DR. MAKHIJANI: No, I think we’ve made our 

comment. I mean, the data before 1967 don’t 

seem to exist, and the statement is that there 

were few workers. So I mean, I don’t know 

what more, I would agree that there’s no --

MR. RICH: Could I say just one more thing. 

That the lack of obvious workers could very 

well be because the assembly were done by 

laboratory people. It was not by contract 

people. And these people, at Los Alamos for 

example, were controlled separately and the 

records are separate. And so as a consequence 
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that probably accounts for the fact that... 

MS. MUNN: Not any NTS workers. 

MR. ELLIOTT: But let me just play that out 

a little bit, Bryce. Are you, in your 

statement is it an implication that a person 

from Los Alamos who was sent down in final 

assembly would have worn a neutron badge or 

would have been monitored for neutrons in a 

way? 

MR. RICH: No, no, I can only speak for 

Livermore because that was my responsibility. 

And we wore an NTS badge. 

MR. ELLIOTT: You wore an NTS badge so you 

wouldn’t have had your neutron dose monitored 

either. 

MR. RICH: Except that it was monitored ^ 

survey instrumentation ^. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Are we on 21 or 22? 

DR. ROESSLER: Yeah, are we talking about a 

neutron dose or --

 MR. PRESLEY: Twenty-one, we’re talking 

about 21. 

DR. ROESSLER: I thought it was skin --

MR. ROLFES: That was related to extremity 

monitoring more so than neutron dose, but --
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MR. ELLIOTT: I’m sorry, I thought you were 

on 22. 

 MR. PRESLEY: We’re not there yet. 

Anybody have any problems with 21 

then? 

 (no response) 

COMMENT 22: NO NEUTRON DOSE DATA UNTIL 1966

 MR. PRESLEY: We’ll move on. Okay, go back 

to the six-page document, the Comment 22 is 

ORAUT 2007 has not provided an accurate 

scientific basis for the use of n-over-p ratio 

of 2.5 unmonitored assembly and TRU waste 

workers. The recommended use of the ratio 

from Pantex does not have an adequate 

scientific foundation. The neutron exposure 

issue for both these groups of workers is 

still outstanding for all cases when they were 

unmonitored. Response: That the supplemental 

justification for 2.5 instead of 1.7 in the 

Pantex TBD is in process. 

Arjun, do you want to address this 

just a minute? 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Yeah, I can go through this 

in the various parts. One is that we didn’t 

review the calculations in detail about Test 
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Site workers in terms of the doses at six 

kilometers, but the approach looked 

reasonable, and we agree with the general. 

There’s not an outstanding issue there 

anymore. 

The only note that we made was that 

site expert interviews, as the same expert as 

I interviewed for the site profile review, 

indicated that the NTS personnel were present 

in the forward areas with the military 

personnel, some of them. But I think you 

have, in any case, you have the ^ of neutron 

dose closer than six kilometers, but just 

raising that in a question since it was stated 

that it would generally not be present. 

There’s no particular action or follow up 

there because, as I remember, you have doses 

closer than six kilometers calculated also. 

In regard to the neutron areas that 

were mentioned, the revision of the site 

profile suggested an n/p ratio of 2.5 for 

assembly workers. Basically, it was Pantex 

ratios, 2.5 and 1.7, for assembly and 

transuranic waste workers. Recently, SC&A has 

sent to the Board our Pantex site profile 
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review. I was not involved in that. I just 

looked at what we had said for the 

neutron/photon ratio as they apply to Pantex. 

And as noted here our team had said 

that the ratio chosen, whether it was 1.7 or 

2.5, was claimant favorable in many cases but 

that was not claimant favorable in other 

cases. And even 2.5 would not be claimant 

favorable in some cases for Pantex itself. 

And transferring Pantex data with 

different physical configurations, different 

buildings, different arrangements, different 

devices, and in Pantex it was the 

neutron/photon ratio was found to be device 

dependent. So it didn’t seem appropriate to 

do that because it varies a great deal 

according to device and time. And so we did 

not agree with the use of a constant 

neutron/photon ratio or with the transfer of 

Pantex data to NTS. 

Then there was the question of neutron 

sources. And there’s a nominal ratio of five 

that has been suggested, but the references 

are not specific to NTS so far as I could 

determine. Is that correct? 
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MR. ROLFES: As far as neutron sources I 

would have to ask Gene Rollins. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: So far as I could determine, 

there were not. 

MR. ROLFES: Okay, Gene, did you hear the 

question? 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): Yes, they 

probably would not be. But these would in all 

likelihood be not untypical from commercially 

available well logging sources. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Now the neutron-to-photon 

ratios cited there as being greater than five 

to as high as 29. And but we don’t know why a 

single ratio of five --

MR. ROLFES: What was the single ratio 

chosen? 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Yeah, basically we felt that 

the ORAU team and NIOSH did not adequately 

justify the use of a single ratio of neutron 

sources and also they were generic numbers and 

not site specific. And you know you’re a 

little bit uncomfortable with the use of a 

non-site specific neutron/photon ratio. 

MR. ROLFES: Well, as we’ve indicated there 

is supplemental justifications for putting 
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something in writing for neutron-to-photon 

ratios for information regarding neutron 

surveys. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Subsequent to our sending 

you the ^? 

MR. ROLFES: Yeah, we are providing, we are 

in process of providing supplemental 

justifications. 

 MR. PRESLEY: In other words what we need to 

do is make sure that this TIB 8-6, ^ as 

Attachment D, 117 through 121, are those the 

pages that we need to look through. Is that 

what we need to ^? 

MR. ROLFES: Gene, could you or is there 

anything that Richard ^ has provided that 

would help to better address the question? We 

are actively working on putting some 

supplemental responses and supplemental 

information together. Is that correct? 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): He basically 

reiterated that the only way that we could get 

our arms around this would be to go into the 

site records and site procedures to see what 

work had been done as far as characterizing 

the neutron fluxes around these types of 
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devices and to look at actual monitoring data 

to see if we can determine what the photon-toneutron ration may have been for these people 

that handled these devices. 

 MR. PRESLEY: So we owe this information 

then to SC&A to evaluate for completeness 

after you all get through with it. 

Yes, Wanda? 

MS. MUNN: The supplement’s coming. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Yes. Can we do that? 

MS. MUNN: Sounds reasonable. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Okay. 

MR. CHEW: I do have a question, Bob. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Yes, sir. 

MR. CHEW: What do they mean by devices? 

Are you talking about neutron sources? Are 

you talking about ^? Are you talking about 

device assemblies? What’s the difference? 

 MR. PRESLEY: Well, you’re talking about 

your neutron sources, aren’t you? 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, there were both. 

There were the actual devices, and then there 

were neutron sources in a separate section 

with different neutron-to-photon ratios, 

right, Mark? 
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MR. ROLFES: I’m sorry, would you repeat 

that, please? 

DR. MAKHIJANI: The question was, are we 

talking about neutron sources or devices. And 

my response was that there are separate 

sections for both, and we responded to both. 

MR. ROLFES: So you’re questioning if we can 

provide something? 

DR. MAKHIJANI: No, it was just a question 

about what we were doing. 

 MR. CLAWSON: What neutron sources? 

MR. ROLFES: Well, it does mention here 

though, it mentions here for unmonitored 

assembly workers as well as TRU waste workers. 

So it’s two separate source terms that we’re 

referring to. 

MR. ELLIOTT: The assembly would be the 

device. 

MR. CHEW: Let’s talk about devices, okay? 

As Bryce was saying, when we’re talking about 

an actual device assembly for a test -- let’s 

focus on that, not sources. Those were all 

done by laboratory personnel and not NTS 

personnel. And I think, Bob, you know that. 

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MR. CHEW: They were not even allowed in the 

area until we had it all buttoned up, and then 

they were able to take it out of the building, 

5310, and transport. They did that for them, 

right? 

MR. RICH: ^ 

MR. CHEW: And even transport, that’s right, 

because they had a caravan out to the forward 

area. They all ^ out to the red ^. I 

remember those days very well. 

Secondly, what you’re talking about, 

Arjun, is neutron sources recognizing that 

there are probably neutron sources ^ as 

logging, probably plutonium-building neutron 

sources for calibration of NTA film. That’s 

probably where you would come up with neutron 

sources. Or neutron sources that they used to 

making sure the detectors that was part of the 

test operation was working. 

Because what you’re really looking for 

during tests is a source of neutrons very 

quickly and very fast. But so they did use 

those kind of neutron sources. Those were 

also handled by scientific and laboratory 

personnel. And so to answer your question 
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you’re going to see a tremendous range 

especially in the area come back to where 

you’re putting a device of working together 

those neutron ratios are going to be 

considerable smaller, especially as soon as 

you make it into an assembly as you well know. 

You know, you put things around it. 

Where the neutron sources you’re 

talking about why you saw a high ratio is that 

when you have a bare neutron source, 

plutonium, beryllium or polonium, you’re going 

to see 30-to-40 times the amount of neutrons 

for the gamma because it is a source of 

neutrons. So we’ve got ^ in order to answer 

your question ^ exactly what you are really 

trying to answer here. 

 MR. PRESLEY: That’s why I assumed sources. 

MR. CHEW: So I’ll give you any number you 

want, any ratio you want. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Our review was pretty clear 

about this. We reviewed it in separate 

sections and if you look at the Pantex site 

profile review, you’ll see that our comments 

there -- which I didn’t independently do that. 

I just assumed that our review, I accepted our 
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review at face value of that -- is that it was 

very device-dependent as you say. And in some 

cases this factor of 1.7 or 2.5 was perfectly 

good and in other cases was not, and was 

dependent on what they were assembling, and 

probably how long it took and so on. And we 

made our comment about the sources quite 

separately from that understanding that 

sources will have higher ratios. 

MR. CHEW: But which one do you want us to 

focus on? 

DR. MAKHIJANI: We have comments on both of 

them, and if there are lab workers that are 

not concerned with NTS, that was a separate 

issue that we raised earlier, can we kind of 

bracket if these were not workers that we 

should worry about for NTS. And then that 

discussion would stop in this context, and 

that would be fine. 

MS. MUNN: One of my questions was 

unmonitored assembly --

DR. MAKHIJANI: There was no monitoring 

before ’66. 

MS. MUNN: -- and TRU waste workers --

MS. MUNN: There was no neutron monitoring 
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MR. CHEW: Well, let’s define what you just 

said. You’re saying that people at Nevada 

Test Site did not wear like an NTA film, 

right? That’s different than, there was 

neutron monitoring because I remember for a 

fact that when we were putting assemblies 

together, and Bryce would know that because I 

used some of his personnel to come up and 

measure the neutron ^ as we were putting the 

units together. 

MR. RICH: Right, right. 

MR. CHEW: So that’s neutron monitoring. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: No personnel involved in 

neutron monitoring before ’66, and in the 

original review we had grave, if I remember 

right, the question of where do these workers 

belong and should we be talking about them 

here or there or their records may be in both 

places. So that may be the bigger issue of 

unclarity. Maybe that’s resolved. I don’t 

know. 

MR. CHEW: Because if they are really 

technical people from the scientific 

laboratories there at DOE, they’re really not 
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part of this NTS discussion. Is that correct? 

MR. ELLIOTT: I’m not so sure. Because when 

we do a dose reconstruction for a claimant, we 

call for DOE to provide us dose information 

for all sites that person worked at. And so 

when they produce it, let’s say it’s a 

Livermore chap who went to Nevada Test Site in 

Device Assembly Operations, then his badge 

would have been issued by NTS for the days he 

was there. 

And we would get that dose result back 

for the dose reconstructor to account for it. 

If that badge did not have NTA -- not an NTA -

- or didn’t have a neutron component, then 

that’s what we’re missing for that particular 

individual’s experience at Nevada Test Site. 

Under the Test Site site profile, I think it’s 

inclusive here. 

MR. CHEW: Well, what would you say 

described this ^ exactly what happened? 

MR. ELLIOTT: So it begs the question what 

are we doing about neutron exposures for 

people who were at the Test Site either as a 

lab person for a short time period doing what 

they were doing or as a Nevada Test Site 
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employee, contractor, subcontractor, doing 

whatever they were doing. Is that --

DR. MAKHIJANI: Yeah, that clarifies it more 

than it’s ever been clear for me. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Well, I finally got something 

right. That’s enough, Larry, shut up. 

 MR. PRESLEY: What we need to do, I guess, 

is task CDC with coming up with, I don’t want 

to say a procedure or a white paper or 

whatever they want to do about what they’ve 

been able to find out or how to monitor these 

workers. 

MR. ELLIOTT: How about assign neutron dose? 

MR. PRESLEY: Up to 1966, is that correct? 

DR. MAKHIJANI: I think the issue’s only up 

to 1966. 

MR. ELLIOTT: So we’ve really got three 

scenarios. You’ve got a lab worker who comes 

in, short duration, does what they do. You’ve 

got an onsite worker who’s there doing 

whatever they normally do. And then you’ve 

got this other scenario situation where the 

exposure really is driving the thing here, and 

it’s either to a source or it’s working on a 

device. 
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DR. MAKHIJANI: Right. Let me clarify that 

actually. It says partial data through ’79, 

and I don’t know that we’ve ever addressed 

that question. Maybe you have a coworker 

model or something. Do you have a coworker 

model for neutron or partial data? I mean, 

the people who were monitored were the ones at 

risk of exposure. I’m not sure that we ever 

cleared that up. 

MR. ROLFES: I can tell you what we do have 

in our review of the 200 claim files that we 

completed. I did allude to the neutron dose. 

I did ask Mel to pull up the Microsoft Word 

document that I did before regarding the 200 

case dosimetry files that we reviewed. 

We reviewed 200 claim external 

dosimetry files to examine them for positive 

neutron beta and gamma results. Of the 200 

claimant files reviewed, only one positive 

neutron result for one individual was located. 

And do you recall what area this 

building was in or what that building might 

have been? 

MR. ELLIOTT: In what timeframe? 

MR. ROLFES: This was in the more recent 
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time period. This was from -- let’s see, once 

again I’d have to clarify this with the person 

that did the review, and I think we’re going 

to prepare something from our review for SC&A 

to look at. So we can incorporate discussion 

of this review in the document that we give to 

SC&A. 

 MR. PRESLEY: You’re going to provide SC&A 

something on the neutron dose capture? 

MR. ROLFES: We will provide --

 MR. PRESLEY: Is that a good word? 

MR. ROLFES: We will provide information 

regarding neutron doses as well as some 

discussion of the partial data up to 1979 I 

guess is what the question is. 

Gene, do you have anything to add 

about the partial data up to 1979 for neutron 

dose? 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): No, I haven’t 

seen that yet, Mark. 

 MR. CLAWSON: There was one other comment to 

come up and Larry did it so good, if I 

remember right at the very beginning of this 

one of our questions for the earlier years was 

how the badges went back and forth. We’re all 
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under the impression that when Livermore came 

out, they used NTS or Nevada Test Site badges 

and so forth. And I thought that we had 

checked into that, and we had clarified that 

that was so, and that they showed results for 

us. I just --

MR. ELLIOTT: Yeah, we’re getting that all 

the time. 

 MR. CLAWSON: Yeah, and I just wanted to 

make sure. I know there was a question of 

that and when they brought that up --

 MR. PRESLEY: It wasn’t just Los Alamos. I 

mean, they were, it was everybody. 

 MR. CLAWSON: I realize that, and I just --

 MR. PRESLEY: You turned your badge in, and 

they put it on the wall. The badge you wore 

in there from wherever you were from hung on 

the wall. You picked up your NTS picture 

badge, and that’s what you wore. 

 MR. CLAWSON: And I realize this is what 

this came from was from some of the claimants 

of how and where they filed for, if they had 

to file an NTS for this or if they have to, if 

they were filing like Lawrence Livermore or 

anything else like this. And this is just 
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why, for --

MR. RICH: And it gets just a little bit 

more complicated than that so I might as well 

throw it out there anyway. Lawrence Livermore 

Laboratory had a residence site, a resident 

group that oversaw the support and the testing 

of devices onsite. In addition, the resident 

Livermore people came out frequently and there 

was that group and they were monitored, both 

at Livermore and at NTS. And so in addition 

to the support team that was the resident 

contract people and other contract people, 

like EG&G and others. 

 MR. PRESLEY: And that’s one reason we’re 

working on this 180 day thing, I mean this 80 

day thing or whatever it is with trying to 

work on the 250 day deciding what the date’s 

going to be because of the people that worked 

out there full time. 

MR. ELLIOTT: And we know that Labor does 

treat it as 86 days. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Is it 86? 

MR. ELLIOTT: Eighty-six. Labor has a 

Technical Bulletin out, and if you were 

stationed there, living there, then you don’t 
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have to stay there 250 days. It’s somewhere 

on the order of 83 or 83 days. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Okay. 

MR. CHEW: I just wanted, Arjun, I just 

wanted to discuss with you about the 

neutron/photon ratio. I want to be careful 

what we say, okay? Remember the data you’re 

talking about from Pantex only happens under a 

certain situation, and immediately it very 

much changes, very quickly, as you well know 

as you’re doing an assembly. 

Because I just now recall, because I 

just realized I’m in an SEC class already. I 

guess it was based on the time. So what you 

would do is take my badge from Nevada Test 

Site and look at the number of photons that 

are on there and then add a neutron component. 

Is that what you’re suggesting here? 

DR. MAKHIJANI: That’s what suggested in the 

MR. CHEW: Yeah, but that only happened to 

me while I was only assembling the unit for a 

very sort time, and the majority of the photon 

I had gotten was probably on recovery. You 

see what I’m saying? 
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MR. RICH: It’s ^. 

MR. CHEW: Yeah, it’s a way ^. That’s where 

I’m coming from. The amount of neutrons I got 

was so small, I don’t care what the ratio was 

^. I mean, I do, but for ^. I just want to 

make sure we focus. We were not constantly 

exposed to neutron and photons at the same 

time. 

MR. ROLFES: Certainly there’s a limited 

number of assemblies associated with a limited 

number of tests. I think it’s only during 

those tests -- excuse me. It’s only during 

those assemblies that a person would have a 

significant risk for neutron exposures. The 

other exposures that a person would be 

receiving would be to, as Mel indicated, the 

other high exposure scenarios would be during 

re-entries or during some discrete incident or 

accident involving fission products, you know, 

exposure to fission products. 

So if we were applying a neutron-tophoton ratio based on recorded gamma doses for 

a person’s entire work history, the neutron 

doses that we would be assigning would be a 

significant overestimate. And that’s 
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typically what we do in a dose reconstruction. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Yeah, that could be. I 

think that’s a different argument than the one 

that was made. 

MR. CHEW: Well, that’s reality. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: What was in the TBD was you 

have a job twice for whom you’re trying to 

calculate. You’re trying to calculate a dose 

for a job type rather than a person because 

the TBD is generic in that sense, and you’re 

shifting a neutron-to-photon ratio from Pantex 

to Nevada Test Site. And the comments that we 

made are in that context. I think when you 

put it in a broader context I think we’re 

certainly open to the case that, especially in 

Nevada Test Site I would be, that for most of 

the work you’ve got photon exposures. You do 

into the tunnels or, you know, you go to 

recovery and so on. There are no neutrons 

there, but you have photons and beta. 

MR. CHEW: Where I’m going with this I don’t 

think the Pantex data really applies. That’s 

where I’m going. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, that’s what we’re 

saying. 
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MR. ROLFES: It results in a claimant 

favorable dose estimate is what the Pantex 

data does for the NTS workers involved in this 

process. 

COMMENT 23: SOIL DATA FOR RESUSPENSION DOSES

 MR. PRESLEY: All right, moving right along. 

The next response is if you would go to the 

full response matrix and has to do with item 

23, page 13 of 14, adequacy of soil data. And 

that has been addressed in Response 5, and as 

I see it should be complete. Okay? 

Twenty-four -- anybody have any 

questions? 

DR. MAURO (by Telephone): Yeah, this is 

John Mauro. On number 23 I believe that’s 

part of the new white paper that Gene Rollins 

will be sending to us. I just want to make 

sure that that’s correct interpretation. 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): That’s correct, 

John. 

MR. ROLFES: I think we also skipped over 

something that I wanted to make sure 

everybody’s aware of. In these Rad paper 

reports associated with the Nuclear Reactor 

Development Station we do, in fact, have 
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integral gamma and neutron data at various 

distances associated with the reactor test. 

This one is specifically for the Kiwi 

TNT test, and I think it’s of interest to note 

that the gamma doses at all distances from the 

reactors are about 50 times higher, the dose 

rates are about 50 times higher than are the 

neutron doses. So I don’t know if anybody’d 

like to see this right now or not, but so 

essentially and additionally, there’s 

documentation in the Rad Safe reports giving 

the maximum recorded exposures for different 

tests, and also indication about the neutron 

doses. 

I haven’t seen any indication of 

positive reported neutron doses for the number 

of records that I have reviewed from the NRDS. 

So essentially if we have neutron and gamma 

dose rate surveys around these reactors, then 

we know the people that are involved and know 

the maximum gamma dose that personnel 

received, we can do a neutron dose 

calculation. 

So anyway, we do that the data here 

for those limited number of individuals that 
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were involved in the testing of the reactors. 

MS. MUNN: Good. 

COMMENT 24: HIGH-FIRED OXIDES

 MR. PRESLEY: On 24, it has to do with the 

presence of high-fired oxides resulting from 

the atmospheric weapons testing and the 

reactor testing, needs to be investigated. I 

have that marked as complete, review for 

completeness. NIOSH has revised the Technical 

Basis Document, Table 5D-24 to include a range 

of solubilities for most radionuclides of 

concern. And let’s see, currently at OCAS. 

Is this something then that we need to, this 

thing gets reviewed? Make sure that SC&A gets 

page 51 of this to go over? 

MS. MUNN: Yeah, probably so. We’ve pretty 

much put that to bed. I think it’s more a 

question of verifying this document is 

appropriate, complete. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: But for atmospheric testing 

it’s a moot question. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Right, it’s a moot question. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: But for the rest of it, 

yeah, we could do that. 

 MR. PRESLEY: We talked about the --
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DR. NETON: This action on NIOSH’s part I 

think is done. TIB-0049 has already been 

issued. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Yeah, we’ve already reviewed 

DR. NETON: TIB-0049 is --

DR. MAKHIJANI: We’ve already reviewed TIB0049. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Then can we mark this 

complete, no action necessary? 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Are you reading from your 

most recent one? No, it’s not there. Where 

are you reading TIB-0049? 

DR. ROESSLER: Page 14 of the --

DR. NETON: It just says the action is NIOSH 

to develop a Super-S TIB guidance. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: And that’s been done. 

MR. RICH: Yes, that’s been done awhile ago. 

MS. MUNN: And that’s why I said it’s 

primarily --

DR. MAKHIJANI: And, and we signed off on 

it. 

MS. MUNN: It’s just a matter of looking at 

it to see that its --

 MR. PRESLEY: Then Response 23 is complete 
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with no action. 

DR. NETON: I think the key in 24 was to say 

that Super-S exists at NTS. We agree with 

that, and OTIB-0049. 

MS. MUNN: Let’s look at the revised 

section. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Okay, 25 --

DR. MAKHIJANI: No action or look at that 

one page. I don’t know. I’ve heard two 

different things from two Board members. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Do we want them to look at 

that one page when that is done? I thought it 

was done. 

MS. MUNN: Well, just to verify that it’s 

appropriately incorporated in this particular 

document. The issue itself is put to bed. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Mark, can you make sure that 

that gets sent to SC&A? 

MR. ROLFES: Sure. 

COMMENT 25: SITE EXPERT INTERVIEWS

 MR. PRESLEY: Okay, this is the one we’ve 

been looking for. NIOSH documentation of site 

expert interviews is inaccurate --

MR. ELLIOTT: You mean inadequate. 

 MR. PRESLEY: -- inadequate -- I’m sorry, 
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sir. This has been beaten around for the last 

six months. Mark has gotten all of the 

paperwork as I understand it to ^ and may have 

gone over this. I believe we have a statement 

back from you all that you don’t have a 

problem with this anymore. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, you know, we affirm it 

was inadequate, and NIOSH produced all the 

documentation, and we had some exchange of 

paper. There’s nothing further to do on that. 

NIOSH now has a more formalized procedure for 

documenting these worker interviews and ^ 

database, and we’re aware of it. We were 

recently trained^ to look at it. So I think 

in this context it’s now a moot question. For 

NTS it’s closed I would say. 

MR. ROLFES: We also note I do want to 

indicate that we conducted additional 

interviews. There are a couple of other 

individuals that are not named here, but, you 

know, to be added. 

MS. MUNN: It might be good for completeness 

to do that. 

MR. ROLFES: I’m sorry, Wanda? 

MS. MUNN: It might be good for completeness 
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to do that. 

MR. ROLFES: We certainly will, we did put 

one individual’s name in there, but there’s a 

couple of more, at least that I could think 

of, that we could add to it. 

ACTION ITEMS

 MR. PRESLEY: Before we get into these other 

comments, I’d like to go over the action items 

and get that done for the site profile, and 

then we can go into these action items. On 

action item Response 1, I have nothing on that 

one --

MS. MUNN: No. 

 MR. PRESLEY: -- whatsoever. 

Two, Mark is to write a white paper to 

SC&A on the Response 5, 6 and 7. 

Number three, Mark to provide pages 79 

through 83 on the new site that was on --

can’t read my own writing here -- site 

description. That’s what it is. When the new 

site description gets completed, you’re to 

provide page 79 through 83 to SC&A. Also 

provide Table C-1-dash-C-2 and C-3. 

MR. ROLFES: The site description is 

available so --
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 MR. PRESLEY: Yeah, and that’s -- Arjun, 

you’re --

DR. MAKHIJANI: We have that. 

 MR. PRESLEY: You have that and ready to go 

on that. 

Comment 4, I’ve got that you need to 

look at pages 135 and 136 -- I’m sorry, pages 

35 and 36 and page 101 and 102. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: I’m sorry. I don’t have, on 

four I just have an item to send a correction 

on the oro-nasal breathing. That’s all I 

have. 

MS. MUNN: And I had a note that new reports 

were going to be reviewed and OCAS’ response 

is going to be expanded. 

MR. ROLFES: Yeah, we’ll take a look at the 

Nuclear Reactor Development Station particle 

issue and prepare something to expand our 

discussion on the potential for ingestion of 

hot particles. 

 MR. CLAWSON: Well, that’s really, if I 

remember right, this, this really wasn’t an 

oro-nasal issue. It was more of a large 

particle ingestion. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Right, that’s the correction 
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that I needed. Other than that was there an 

action item for us in terms of reviewing? 

MR. ELLIOTT: Review what we send you. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Like the Rad Safe reports or 

something? I’m not clear. I didn’t have 

anything written down. 

MS. MUNN: That’s because we didn’t give you 

any. I don’t believe so. My notes didn’t 

show anything. They just showed that Mark was 

going to expand the level based on the review. 

 MR. CLAWSON: I thought SC&A was going to 

review it. 

MS. MUNN: Well, this is, the oro-nasal 

breathing thing is gone completely. That’s 

not there. We’ve reworded the comment, and 

because we reworded the comment and because 

it’s response is adequate but needs to be 

expanded because of the new material, there 

really isn’t any issue, I think, with SC&A 

because it’s done. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Well, I’ve got down apparently 

that 135, 136 is a note that I put in there 

for something else. It says Mark is to revise 

the content or the comment on hot particles, 

and we’re going to change the title of this 
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thing to --

DR. MAKHIJANI: Actually then if the words 

due to oro-nasal breathing can be deleted, I 

think Jim suggested that earlier. If we could 

just all delete, then this action will be 

done. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Right, and then I have I 

marked it complete. 

Five then is two pages. 

MR. ROLFES: We received some comments from 

SC&A on Gene Rollins’ ambient environmental 

intake model, and we were going to wait to get 

that to SC&A in an approved-type profile 

document. However, we’re going to address 

their comments in a new white paper revision, 

so that is our action item to get to. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Item six then. 

MR. ROLFES: Same thing. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Same thing, and it’s the same 

thing with seven, white paper. 

Eight is complete. 

Nine is also complete. 

Ten -- 

MR. ROLFES: I don’t have any action items 

written down on this. 
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 MR. PRESLEY: Yeah, I’ve got ten marked 

complete. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Ten I have written down that 

you asked us to review the page changes. 

DR. ROESSLER: Yeah, page 42 is what I 

circled here. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Page 42? Okay. 

Page 11 or Response 11, we’re going to 

send page 77 and 78 on the site description, 

and you should have that. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: We have that. 

 MR. PRESLEY: You’re got that. 

MR. ROLFES: They’re going to take a look 

at, and I guess the tables that I mentioned, 

C-1, C-2 and C-3 which are the job matrices 

that give indicators of potential for 

exposure. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: And we’re also to look at 

those environmental dose pages that we didn’t 

look at before. 

MR. ROLFES: These are in the external dose 

portion of the TBD. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Right. 

MR. ROLFES: So it’s pages 35 and 36 as well 

as 101 and 102. 
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 MR. PRESLEY: Twelve, I have no comment on. 

It’s complete. 

Thirteen I show is complete. 

DR. ROESSLER: I show page 41 and page 52 

are going to SC&A. 

MR. ROLFES: They’ll confirm that we put the 

bounding calculations. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Item 14. I don’t show any 

action items whatsoever on that. 

DR. ROESSLER: I show that SC&A is going to 

look at Section 5.6.3 which starts on page 53. 

MR. ROLFES: And just to confirm that we 

have methodology to interpret gross fission 

product for gross alpha bioassay data in a 

claimant favorable manner. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Fifteen, nothing whatever. 

Sixteen, I’ve got it marked complete. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes, there’s nothing on 16. 

 MR. PRESLEY: We marked out on OTIB-0017, 

the reference to OTIB-0017, and I have that 

complete. 

DR. ROESSLER: What are you on? 

 MR. PRESLEY: Seventeen, we’ve got response 

pages on review 49 through 54. 

MR. ROLFES: So SC&A is going to take a look 
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at 49 through 54. Action was? 

 MR. PRESLEY: I have 18 marked complete. 

Nineteen is CDC, HHS, NIOSH and SC&A 

are going to have a meeting and work this 

technical call to work this out. 

 MR. CLAWSON: Hey, Bob, on 18 back there, I 

thought there was a page insert in that, and I 

thought that --

 MR. PRESLEY: There is a page insert in 

there. 

MS. MUNN: Yeah, page 53. 

DR. NETON: Yeah, that’s tied in with 17. 

 MR. PRESLEY: They will get 53, 49 through 

54 in 17. 

Twenty, NIOSH to look at coworker 

tables and non-use of badges, and come up with 

a write up to the Board on your findings on 

that. 

DR. ROESSLER: Before 1966. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Before 1966. 

MR. ROLFES: So just to confirm we are 

talking from 1951 through 1966. So, it’s 

external dose. 

DR. NETON: Yeah, I thought we were looking 

at ’63 to ’66. 
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MR. ROLFES: Do we need to clarify that? 

 MR. PRESLEY: Well, --

DR. NETON: Right, but Arjun pointed out we 

are doing dose reconstructions prior to ’63 

for external so to some extent -- I don’t 

know, I --

MS. MUNN: I thought the whole object here 

was to try to --

DR. NETON: Our only option before ’63 is to 

say we can’t do it, and there’s no recourse 

for any of those people. So to some extent 

those are partial dose reconstructions the 

best we could do. 

MS. MUNN: ‘Sixty-three to ’66. 

DR. NETON: Otherwise we --

DR. MAKHIJANI: John, do you agree with 

that? 

DR. MAURO (by Telephone): I’m sorry. I was 

looking at something on my e-mail. Could you 

please repeat the question? 

DR. MAKHIJANI: All right, I signed off for 

you. It’s okay. 

MR. ROLFES: Never mind. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Twenty-one, I have a response 

that NIOSH will look at and make remarks on 
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OTIB-0017. 

MS. MUNN: And it may not be necessary 

there. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Twenty-two --

DR. MAKHIJANI: Mr. Presley, sorry, I missed 

what you said there. 

MS. MUNN: Response 21, NIOSH is going to 

check and see whether or not OTIB-0017 really 

is appropriate. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Twenty-two, NIOSH to get the 

response to SC&A on neutron dose data up to 

1979. 

DR. ROESSLER: How about ’66? 

MR. ELLIOTT: How we assign dose up to ’66 

and then do we have enough neutron dose to use 

beyond ’66 to ’79? 

 MR. PRESLEY: That’s correct. 

DR. ROESSLER: Yeah, that was it. 

DR. MAKHIJANI: These are the 200 claimant 

files. 

MR. ROLFES: Yes, the analysis of the 200 

claimant files, we can take a look at those. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Twenty-four, I have complete, 

and I also have that you’re to send page 51 of 

the 5.6.1 to SC&A for review. 
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And 25 we’ve marked complete. That 

takes care of the matrix. Now, does anybody 

need to take a short potty break because we’ve 

got about 50 minutes here before some of us 

have to go. We have, SC&A has, they have --

Arjun, what do you want to call these? 

MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS 

DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, as I mentioned, we 

were not doing a complete review, but I had, 

since it was a complete rewrite, I asked the 

team that was working on it to read through 

the whole TBD because how to do a review of 

something if you don’t know where the relevant 

items are going to be. 

And so these other items were 

miscellaneous items that were sent to me by 

various members of the team. So I collected 

the relevant ones and suggested, and just 

included them as comments, not as findings, 

for NIOSH in case you wanted to do anything 

with them. I’m not presenting them as 

findings. It’s up to you how you want to deal 

with them. 

MR. ELLIOTT: Have we studied these at all? 

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have, in fact, seen these. These are still on 

the six-page matrix that we have. We’re just 

in the process, many of these comments were on 

the external dose TBD that was released 

shortly before the last meeting, and we just, 

we’re still in the process of actively putting 

together supplementary information to address 

these comments. We just had Richard ^ prepare 

some additional responses, and he’s going to 

be working on some of these I believe. 

Anyway, if you’d like to go through them, I’d 

be happy to respond and also to see if we 

could have Gene, Gene might be able to give 

some additional details of our path forward to 

address these other comments. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I just wonder if that’s not 

premature. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, I think they’re a 

matter of record. I mean, we can read them 

into the record. I don’t know what the status 

of this document is. 

 DR. NETON: We’re not able to close these 

out completely in any sense. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: No. 

 DR. NETON: ^ passing them out. 
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 MR. ROLFES: Yeah, we haven’t, we’re aware 

of the issues and given the time constraints, 

we prepared for this meeting in a very short 

amount of time. I mean, we had about a week 

to prepare for the meetings. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I think it would be 

appropriate to read them into the record, and 

if we have any need of clarification, now is a 

great opportunity for us to get that. I don’t 

think we’re at the point where we’re ready to 

expound upon how we are going to address each 

or any of them. 

 DR. WADE: Remember, SC&A is offering these 

as comments, not as findings. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yeah, and we weren’t 

expecting responses one way or another. 

 DR. WADE: So we appreciate it. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Again, this goes to our 

listing. We list them. We’re going to hear, 

and then we’re going to act. 

 MR. ROLFES: We can just let Arjun go ahead 

and read his comments, and we’ll provide our -

– 

 MR. PRESLEY: Arjun, go ahead and let’s read 

your comments, and then, Mark, we’ll require 
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or provide a response that they’ve got. But 

let’s remember, people have to get out of here 

and there’s nothing that we can really do 

about these today other than read them into 

the minutes and – 

 MR. ELLIOTT: And if we need any 

clarification we can ask for that? 

 MR. PRESLEY: That’s correct. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Okay, let me do this as 

rapidly as possible. 

The first comment: Despite the fact 

that this procedure could overestimate low 

energy photon dose, this approach to film 

dosimetry is invalid as a relationship between 

optical density and exposure is non-linear. 

That optical density must be converted to 

exposure prior to performing any subtraction. 

Thus, an incremental beta dose that is 

measured by the film emulsion on top of the 

gamma dose may lead to an underestimate of the 

beta dose. 

MR. ROLFES: And the NIOSH response is that 

we’re going to review the dosimetry approach. 

 DR. NETON: I don’t think we’re going to get 

involved in all responses. 
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 MR. ELLIOTT: Unless we have a 

clarification. 

 DR. NETON: Unless we have a clarification. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: And the second comment was 

we just pointed out some small errors and 

editorial issues that need correction. 

The third – 

DR. ROESSLER: The units might be 

significant for -– 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: They are listed in the -– 

 DR. ROESSLER: You’ve got them marked -– 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: We have them marked so they 

can correct if they agree. 

Third comment: Table 6-8 is not a 

complete list of radionuclides released during 

vents of underground explosions. A more 

accurate and complete list has been given in 

Hicks 1981, which is in the list of references 

of the documents we reviewed. 

The fourth comment: SC&A’s site 

expert, Lynn Anspaugh, informed SC&A that he 

has been told that the potential for noble gas 

exposure during tunnel re-entries was not 

limited to radiation technicians and miners 

which is in disagreement with the End Note 22 
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in the site profile on page 61. According to 

Dr. Anspaugh, re-entries involved electronic 

technicians and other laboratory personnel as 

well as supporting crafts persons. Interviews 

with person who were actually present may help 

clarify this issue. 

Fifth comment: The status of the dose 

reconstruction record of NTS employees who 

were assigned to the Tonopah Test Range is 

unclear. ORAU 2007 -- that is that TBD --

states that Sandia is, quote, the custodian of 

TTR dosimetry records. 

MR. ELLIOTT: There should be an end quote 

there somewhere. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: However, there is no 

discussion in the TBD of how these records 

have been integrated into NTS employee records 

and whether TTR doses are being properly taken 

into account. 

And the sixth comment was about 

National Lab and NTS dosimetry records, and 

it’s a little bit cryptic for me, and I don’t 

know. I’ll just leave it at that because 

that’s what’s in the matrix. I don’t remember 

what’s in the detail. The detail of this may 
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be how they meshed together which maybe Larry 

addressed earlier. 

MR. ROLFES: I think we spoke to that a 

little bit already. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yeah, right, I think Larry 

did as well. 

Seventh comment: Table 2-2 from 

Volume 2 of the TBD -- that’s in the old 

volume -- has been referred to several times 

in your site profile revision. However, it 

has been noted that this table does not 

provide a complete list of relevant 

radionuclides which problem should be 

corrected. External dose TBD should use a 

table with a complete list of relevant 

radionuclides. 

Eighth comment: Table 6-10 is 

confusing and should be clarified as to the 

connection with the standard value for 

relative biological effectiveness. 

Ninth comment: Table 6-13 states that 

photon doses are indicated for atmospheric 

safety test areas although test number four ^, 

and data should be included in this table for 

that event. Also, there were other such tests 
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on the Tonopah Test Range, use of either the ^ 

plain surface or soil contaminated to an 

infinite depth is not appropriate for fallout. 

^ notes that exposure factors derived 

by ^ 1980 for exponentially distributed^ 

sources. ^ exponentially distributed source 

are more appropriate, but such factors are not 

used here^. The ^ for beta contamination for 

60 tests in Table 6-14 is not appropriate for 

the same reason. 

Tenth comment: On page 91 there’s a 

comment about low humidity is not valid for 

tunnel workers. 

And eleventh comment: Section 6.4.1.1 

of the TBD contains Table 6-11 which lists 50 

percent and 95 percent annual doses for 1945 

through 1957. These doses are based on sitewide averages. It’s not clear why such a 

broad-brush approach is being used. The 

consequence of this approach is that the 

claimant may have their assigned dose diluted, 

especially in the years when testing did not 

occur. 

Although it is not clear from the TBD, 

^ activities involve exposure to the radiation 
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^ no tests. For example, visits to previously 

contaminated ^ involving radiation 

radiography, ^ handling, et cetera, may have 

occurred during ^. Data should be refined to 

be job or location specific. 

And the last comment: Ignoring beta 

dose is only appropriate in a minimum 

efficiency approach for a case that will be 

compensated. This is not made explicit. The 

language in the above statement should be 

clarified to state that the zero electron 

doses are a reasonable approach only for 

minimal dose calculations in compensable 

cases. 

And those were the comments. 

MR. ELLIOTT: I don’t think we have any 

questions for clarification. 

 DR. WADE: We’re done. Do you want to talk 

a little about when you’ll meet again or -– 

 MR. PRESLEY: Well, I guess we need to. 

Now, as I see it, SC&A, number one, they have 

quite a bit to do to get these pages, and so 

does Mark, because he’s got some of the stuff 

to come up. We’re going to try to put this 

thing on the table in Nevada. Is that 
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correct, Lew? 

 DR. WADE: Yes. 

 MR. PRESLEY: As I see it, once everybody 

gets everything looked at, if there’s a 

possibility maybe with us getting together the 

first of January. Let’s see, we go to Nevada 

-– 

 DR. WADE: The 8th, 9th, 10th . 

 MR. PRESLEY: What? 

 DR. WADE: Eight, nine, ten. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Eight, nine, ten. I’m 

wondering if it’s a possibility that we might 

get together on a conference call some time 

the week before that. I realize that’s not 

much time for everybody to, if we’ve got a 

problem or anything like that to go back and 

respond to it. Either that or the week before 

Christmas I have wide open. 

 DR. ROESSLER: I’m committed that week, the 

week before Christmas. And when you talk 

about the week before Nevada, you’re talking 

about the first few days in January? 

Somewhere in there? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Second through the fourth. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Yeah, 2nd, 3rd and 4th . We’ve 
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got a Procedures working group in Cincinnati 

December the 11th . 

 MS. MUNN: Yes, we do. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Wanda will be here. I will be 

here. 

 DR. ROESSLER: And I’ll be in San Antonio 

for a Society for Risk Analysis meeting that 

week. But the week before Christmas I could 

be available for a conference call. How long 

do you think the conference call might take? 

 DR. WADE: We’ll try for December 19th? 

 DR. ROESSLER: What? 

 DR. WADE: December 19th for a conference 

call. 

 MR. PRESLEY: We had that date set up 

before. 

Wanda? 

MS. MUNN: Oh, yeah, sure. 

 DR. WADE: Wanda enthusiastically endorses. 

 DR. ROESSLER: Can I call from the beach in 

Florida? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: What about December 4th? Can 

we have all our stuff done by then? Is that a 

good, I mean, that moves everything up I know, 

but --
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 MR. ROLFES: Gene, how do we feel about 

having things? Do we think we can resolve the 

outstanding issues on the fourth, by the 

fourth of December? 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): If we don’t 

have them resolved, we can certainly have a 

path forward. 

 DR. ROESSLER: But SC&A needs some time. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: It’s got to be delivered 

before the fourth so it can be digested. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Yeah, it’s got to get to them 

so they’ve got time. 

 MR. ROLFES: It cuts down our amount of 

time. 

Gene, how long do you feel that some 

of these items might require in order to 

respond? 

MR. ELLIOTT: Well, if we can finish it by 

the fourth, can we, the 19th looks more 

reasonable then. 

MR. ROLLINS (by Telephone): These 

activities are going to require a good bit of 

data capture. I don’t really have a feel for 

how easy that’s going to be to do. 

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if it doesn’t come about, then we’ll back up 

and punt? My only other thing about this is 

we are to be there Tuesday, Wednesday and 

Thursday. There is a possibility that we 

could do like we did before and have a Monday, 

the 7th, meeting to discuss and cuss and 

possibly come up with a recommendation. 

 MS. MUNN: I can do that. 

 DR. ROESSLER: I like that. 

 MS. MUNN: That ought to give everybody 

enough time to do what they need to do. 

 MR. PRESLEY: I think I can travel on the 6th 

of January if I have to. There’s something in 

there, and I don’t have it on my calendar. 

I’m sorry, but I think I can travel on that 

Sunday. 

 MS. MUNN: There’s a lot of direct flights 

to Las Vegas. You can catch a morning flight 

and be there well before noon and have an 

afternoon/evening session. 

 MR. PRESLEY: We could do that. So we’re 

going to, let’s shoot for the 19th, a 

conference call. 

Larry, can you set that up, please? 

DR. ROESSLER: We’re going to do both? 
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 MR. PRESLEY: Let’s see if we can knock this 

thing in the head with a conference call on 

the 19th . If not, then we’ll meet on the 

seventh in Nevada. 

 DR. WADE: So that’s tentative. 

 DR. ROESSLER: So we really can’t make 

airline reservations or anything until we 

know. Or we could make them and change them. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Make them and change them. 

 DR. WADE: We’ll be booking a hotel room. I 

guess we’ll have to so if we change we just 

have a hotel room we can all go to. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Wanda, eleven o’clock eastern 

standard time? 

 MS. MUNN: Eleven o’clock will be fine on 

the 19th . 

 MR. PRESLEY: That all right with everybody 

else? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. 

 DR. WADE: And then if we go on the seventh, 

we’ll do it mid-day so people can travel in 

that morning. 

 MR. PRESLEY: If we have to. Start at noon. 

 DR. WADE: Okay. 

 MS. MUNN: Start at nine if we do it on the 
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seventh? 

 DR. WADE: Noon. 

 MR. PRESLEY: We will supply supper if we 

run over. How’s that? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: But the 19th you’re starting at 

11? 

 DR. WADE: Say again, Larry? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: But the 19th you’re starting at 

11 a.m. teleconference. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Eleven a.m. eastern standard 

time. 

 DR. WADE: The seventh tentatively at noon 

Las Vegas time. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Make sure if we’re at the 

Westin that we get the big room, please, and 

they don’t put us in that stage again like 

they did. 

 DR. WADE: Yeah, that was pretty mean. 

 MR. PRESLEY: That was awful. Does anybody 

else have anything? 

 DR. WADE: No, thank you all very much. 

We’re going to cut the phone call now. Thank 

you for your patience on the phone, your 

perseverance. You’re good people. 

(Whereupon, the work group meeting adjourned 
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___________________________________ 

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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 Oct. 25, 

2007; 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 

26th day of Sept., 2008. 

STEVEN RAY GREEN, CCR, CVR-CM, PNSC 

CERTIFIED MERIT COURT REPORTER 

CERTIFICATE NUMBER: A-2102