AOB R44 OAK RIDGE NATIONAL LABORATORY OPERATED re BY UNION CARBIDE CORPORATION NUCLEAR DIVISION a POST OFFICE BOX X OAK RIDGE, TENNESSEE 37830 June 8, 1981 Dr. Bruce W. Wachholz EV-30, GTN Office of Health and Environmental Research Office of Energy Research U.S. Department of Energy Washington, DC 20545 Dear Bruce: My comments for the non-medical component of the Marshall Islands program at Brookhaven are going to be brief. In my opinion, the work (particularly that of Lessard) represents good incividual efforts. My concern is that it is basically a “one-man" show when it comes to dosimetry models. Lessard needs needs some interaction with a strong modeling group. Particular emphasis needs to be placed on error analyses of the model (or models). I did not get the feeling that Lessard could make much of an attempt at estimating error except by some of the standard statistical procedures. Predicting error associated with models is becoming a discipline in itself, and I suggest that the next approach be estimating the degree of error or basically what kind of con- fidence can you place in the model. There should be more and better communication between BNL and LLL; however, I am not sure how realistic it is to think that such an interaction will take place. For example, it is often difficult to get groups within large institutions to interact (or even between floors of buildings), let alone two groups each on different sides of the U.S. Thus, if there is a lack of conmunication it could be the fault of DOE. The data that Bob Mittenberger generates are the backbone of their work and any errors would have-Far-reaching circumstances. He is certainly enthu- Siastic about his work, and it probably bears on the quality. I got the idea that they were cross-checking, duplicating, and conducting round-robins with other laboratories that quality assurance was being maintained. In my opinion, the detection of Pu body burdens in attocurie levels is not necessary; however, remember this is not my major interest. If the opportunity comes about, they could send a person (presumably a native from Rongelap) to ORNL to verify the possible jifferences in counting ability. I would think this would be the first .tep before investing heavily in additional body counting equipment.