Below are some of the projects we have worked on.

RACER
RACER (Risk Analysis, Communication, Evaluation, and Reduction) is a transparent and flexible process that uses available data to evaluate and communicate human health risk to help make decisions and set priorities to manage risk. RACER includes integrated tools that can be customized to facilitate stakeholder involvement, optimize the use of resources, reevaluate results based on new information, and track decisions. RAC is supported by Colorado State University, which receives funding for the project from Los Alamos National Laboratory.

San Ildefonso Tribal Risk Assessment
RAC has worked with the San Ildefonso Pueblo to implement the concepts of RACER into their Tribal Risk Assessment program, which is designed to evaluate human health and environmental risks to the Pueblo community from radionuclides and chemicals in the environment, including sources from Los Alamos National Laboratory. The flexibility of RACER allows environmental data collected at the Pueblo to be incorporated into the RACER database and provides a risk calculation tool that is tailored to the specific pathways of exposure encountered by members of the Pueblo. The project is supported by the Pueblo of San Ildefonso.

Tungsten Operational Risk Assessment
RAC, in collaboration with Battelle Memorial Institute, is applying the RACER process and tools to implement an operational risk assessment to evaluate the human health implications related to tungsten and other materials used at military sites. A decision support tool is included that allows decision makers to quickly see and compare the results of risk analyses for military sites and the impact on the results when uncertainties are reduced through improvements in input data. RAC’s work is supported by Battelle Memorial Institute, which receives its funding from the U.S. Army.

Uravan Historical Dose Reconstruction
RAC completed an historical dose reconstruction of the Uravan milling site in Colorado to investigate potential doses to former residents who claimed they received certain radiation doses from exposure to ionizing radiation released from the site. The town of Uravan no longer exists, having closed in 1986. All the buildings were subsequently demolished, except for the Boarding House and the Community Building, which are preserved in an historic district, and the area was remediated by Union Carbide and Umetco. The work was supported by Union Carbide Corporation.

Assessment of Cerro Grande Fire
Following the Cerro Grande Fire in northern New Mexico in May 2000, RAC was asked by the Department of Energy, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and New Mexico Environment Department to perform an independent analysis of the health risks to the public from the fire burning within the boundary of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in areas known or suspected to be contaminated with radionuclides and chemicals. The work was supported by the New Mexico Environment Department. The worked was performed in an open environment so different organizations and members of the public could provide input to and comments on the work as it progressed.

Audit of Los Alamos National Laboratory for Compliance with the Clean Air Act
RAC was asked by the Department of Justice to perform a series of technical audits of Los Alamos National Laboratory for compliance with the Clean Air Act, 40 CFR 61, subpart H. The project was initiated by a lawsuit filed by Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety against the U.S. Department of Energy and the former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory. Settlement of the suit required that the audits be performed by an organization agreed to by all parties, and RAC was chosen as the independent auditor.
Final Report   (Adobe PDF)

Soil Action Levels
The Citizen’s Advisory Board at Rocky Flats selected RAC to derive soil action levels to be used as the basis for cleanup and decommissioning of the Rocky Flats Plant near Denver Colorado. Over a period of 18 months, RAC worked with the Radionuclide Soil Action Level Oversight Panel, a group of technical and non-technical community members with considerable experience in Rocky Flats issues, to develop the recommendations for soil cleanup. Ultimately, these recommendations were used as the basis for cleanup at the site. Working with local citizens during the process helped the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment reach a unified approach to cleanup at the site, which has now been completed. The work was supported by the Rocky Flats Citizen’s Advisory Board.

Rocky Flats Historical Public Exposures Project
The former Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant, located northwest of Denver, Colorado operated from 1952 to 1989 and produced nuclear weapons triggers, called pits, from plutonium. RAC performed Phase II of the Historical Public Exposures Study on the Rocky Flats Site. This phase focused on estimating increased cancer risk to residents of the surrounding communities during the plant’s operation from releases that were carried off-site and led to exposure of the public. This work was supported by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and overseen by a Panel of technical and non-technical individuals representing scientists and community members. By the study’s end, RAC had produced 20 technical reports documenting releases to the environment from the facility, the transport of these materials in the environment, and health risk to people who may have been exposed.

Fernald Dosimetry Reconstruction Project
This project was conducted to estimate the doses and risks to the public from radioactive materials released from the Fernald Feed Materials Production Center (FMPC) during its 38 years of operations, from 1951 through 1988. The FMPC is located near Fernald, Ohio, about 15 miles northwest of Cincinnati, Ohio, and processed uranium compounds for nuclear weapons production, as well as some uranium ore and thorium. The project was supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the work was completed entirely by RAC. It was reviewed by the National Academy of Sciences. When the work was completed in 1999, the citizens around Fernald and the organizations responsible for operation of the facility had a much clearer understanding of the health risks that may have been received by the public from releases during its operation.

Savannah River Site Historical Dose Reconstruction
The Savannah River Site (SRS) is a US Department of Energy complex that occupies about 300 square miles along the Savannah River in South Carolina, on the Georgia border. The Savannah River Site has produced plutonium, tritium and other materials for national defense and some civilian purposes. The historical dose reconstruction is concerned with the potential health risks to people exposed to chemicals and radioactive releases to the offsite environment from SRS during its operations, which started in 1951. RAC performed Phases I and II of the Savannah River Site Historical Dose Reconstruction.

Phase I involved a comprehensive search of SRS and other locations to find and copy documents and other records of potential value to the dose reconstruction project. The primary product of Phase I was an electronic document database. RAC’s systematic review and database documentation of the historical records included more than 50,000 boxes of records. This was the first complete review of historical records reviewed at any DOE site. In Phase II, RAC quantified the releases of radionuclides and chemicals to the environment. RAC also compiled environmental monitoring datasets for radionuclide concentrations measured in various environmental media, such as soil, water, milk, and produce, that could later be used to verify release estimates or transport calculations or could provide direct measures of exposure. The project was supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The first two Phases of the study were critical to laying the foundation for understanding risk associated with historical releases at the site beginning in 1951.

Reconstructing Releases from the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL)
The Idaho National Laboratory, situated on the Snake River Plain of southeastern Idaho, is unique among the U.S. Department of Energy facilities because it is a large, complex site with many independent contractors, goals, and missions. Under a series of task orders supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, RAC carried out several key projects that led to a comprehensive risk analysis from exposures to the public at INEEL. This work included document review and cataloging, estimation of source terms for chemicals and radionuclides, and establishing priorities for sources, pathways, and materials released.

Doses from Short-Lived Radionuclides at Hanford
From 1944 to 1989, the U.S. government made plutonium for nuclear weapons at Hanford in southeast Washington state. Radioactive materials were released to both the air and water from Hanford activities. The Hanford Environmental Dose Reconstruction Project (HEDR) was a scientific study to estimate radiation doses to members of the public located offsite as result of these releases. As part of the follow-up work to HEDR, RAC evaluated radiation doses from short-lived radionuclides and radioactive particles released to the atmosphere during early operations at the Hanford Site. This was a topic of interest to persons who worked or lived on or near the Hanford Reservation, such as military personnel stationed on the reservation, to protect the facilities and construction workers who built additional reactors and processing plants after the first facilities began operating, in late 1944. The work was supported under a task order by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Risk-based screening for releases to the Columbia River at Hanford
As part of the follow up work to HEDR, RAC developed and applied a two-stage, risk-based screening methodology to identify the most important radionuclides and exposure pathways for radionuclide releases to the Columbia River from the Hanford Site. This work allowed CDC to evaluate the recommendation a review of the HEDR dose estimates for ATSDR that additional radionuclides should have been included in the HEDR dose calculations for the Columbia River. One key focus of this work was to investigate doses to Native Americans who use the Columbia River as a primary source of food (both now and historically). In order to accomplish this, RAC used specific dietary information and habit data that were collected directly from Native American tribes in the region.

Technical Workshops
RAC has conducted numerous technical workshops focused on specific topics. These workshops were supported by different organizations that sought to gather experts in a particular field, to get the latest scientific knowledge available and to document the information for use in ongoing or future studies related to risk. RAC organized and hosted these workshops and published reports of the outcome.


 

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