“4 ti Department of Energy Washington, D.C. 20545 NOV 9 Col. Charles J. Treat Chairman, Conference on Runit Cleanup Field Command, Defense Nuclear Agency Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico 87115 4877 - ; -Dear Col. Treat: I appreciate the opportunity to review your draft report and the draft minutes of the October 4-5 conference. The draft report to Commander, FCDNA, is quite acceptable. I have no suggestions. I do have a measure of concern for what appears an honest difference of opinion that surfaced in the meeting on the general subject of how the Task Group's recommendations for cleanup of transuranium elements in soil are to be interpreted. In the discussion in Las Vegas, I attempted to describe the assump- tions and realizations of the Task Group as we tried to prescribe the letter and intent of the recommendations. The more important of these are: 1. Cleanup criteria must be flexible enough to allow judgements to be made in the field. 2. A prejudgement was needed that soil cleanup should be conducted 3. A prejudgement was needed that soil cleanup was not required below a certain level. 4. above a certain contamination level. For the range in between judgements made in the field case- by-case by experts were likely to be superior to any judge- ments that could be made in advance. 5. 6. Guidance for these field judgements was presented in Appendix II, pages III-8 and III-9, of the Task Group report. The following quotes from this Appendix define the intent “of the recommendations: a) "Any areas or locations where soil concentrations of 39Pu are greater than 400 pCi/g should receive cor- rective action...." (underlining added). ee A bed| are eS,. «eS .