Selected Presentations
2022 Scientific Advisory Committee Meeting
Financial & Administrative Developments – Bedell, M.
Ms. Bedell summarized administrative and financial aspects of the Registries. The USTUR was awarded a budget of $1.2 million for the FY2022 financial year. A breakdown of how these funds were spent was provided, along with an overview of the budget for FY2023.
2021 SAC Recommendations & Overview – Tolmachev, S.
Dr. Tolmachev described the USTUR’s response to each of the SAC’s recommendations from last April’s meeting, and provided an overview the USTUR’s activities and achievements during FY2022. This included recent and upcoming publications on topics such as models for brain dosimetry, radium worker dosimetry, the importance of scar-tissue compartments in the lung, and ICP-MS analysis of brain, hair, and nail samples.
Radiochemistry Progress Report – Tabatadze, G.
Dr. Tabatadze summarized operations at the USTUR’s radiochemistry laboratory. The USTUR analyzed 99 samples from two donors during FY2022. This was lower than the laboratory’s normal capacity due to several months of downtime while corroded fume hoods and ducting were replaced with new acid resistant PVC equipment. Despite the downtime, the tissue sample backlog did not increase and the laboratory’s throughput is expected to return to normal during FY2023.
Registrant Statistics and IRB – McComish, S.
Ms. McComish briefly summarized Registrant statistics and intake scenarios for three recent donations. This was followed by a summary of changes to the USTUR’s institutional review board protocol, and an update on the status of the USTUR’s effort to analyze urine samples from living Registrants for actinides. The USTUR had contacted 23 Registrants to ask if they were interested in submitting urine samples, shipped 13 urine collection kits, and received 10 samples back.
Database Harmonization – McComish, S.
Ms. McComish provided an update on a project to harmonize the THEMIS, radiochemistry, planchets, and reagents databases such that they function as a single laboratory information management system (LIMS). Tables for the new inventory database have been built in SQL, efforts are underway to import data into the new tables, and design of the user interface has been initiated.
Regional retention of plutonium in the respiratory tract of four acutely-exposed workers can be described using scar-tissue compartments – Poudel, D.
Dr. Poudel compared chemical binding of plutonium in the lung, which is modeled using the bound state in the ICRP 130 respiratory tract model, and physical binding associated with fibrosis and scar tissue. Inconsistencies of the chemical binding model were discussed, and a biokinetic model that replaced the bound state with scar tissue compartments was proposed.
Uncertainty Project: Plutonium in Skeleton – Šefl, M.
Dr. Šefl explained the latent bone modeling method for estimating the concentration of actinides in the entire skeleton from the concentrations in a limited number of individual bones. This model was developed using data from 13 non-osteoporotic whole-body donors, and was used to estimate the plutonium concentrations in the skeletons of 7 partial-body donors. The latent bone model reduces the uncertainty in skeletal concentrations that are calculated form individual bones, and is the USTUR’s preferred method for this calculation.
Biokinetics of Highly Enriched Uranium in a Female Nuclear Worker – Avtandilashvili, M.
Dr. Avtandilashvili studied the distribution of highly-enriched uranium in the body of a female whole-body donor. The donor was chronically exposed to type M uranium, but also had two acute inhalations – one to type M material and the other to a type M/S mixture. ICRP models adequately described uranium biokinetics except for retention in the liver, which was overestimated by a factor of 9, and the kidneys, which was underestimated by a factor of 8.
Research and Operation in FY2023 – Tolmachev, S.Y.
Dr. Tolmachev presented the USTUR’s 5- and 10-year plans for research and operation of the Registries. He also discussed USTUR’s goals for the coming year in greater depth. This included completing the installation of new fume hoods at the radiochemistry laboratory, entering health physics data from Hanford Registrants into the database, continued efforts to harmonize the laboratory information systems, and a wide variety of internal and collaborative research projects.