Monoceros

I recently flew on an Air Canada flight on either a CRJ100 or CRJ200. While waiting for the bags to come out of the hold I noticed a large radiation symbol on the back bulkhead of the hold - is this normal? I assume its ballast?

84fiero

Without seeing exactly what it is you saw (and not being familiar with the CRJ hold layout) it could be marking the location of the fire detection system in the cargo hold. Just like many home smoke detectors, there are ionization detectors using Americium (a radioactive element) to sense smoke. Other possibilities, as well. It's definitely not "ballast".

beckoa

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AC681

It's also the location where Radioactive cargo is to be placed and secured,

Fiordland

As a side note, the prompt delivery of radioactive cargo is vital to public health.

Technetium 99 generators are used in hospitals all over the country. The generators usually need to be replaced with new ones once or twice a week. These are used in nuclear medicine for cardiac imaging among other things.

Not certain if it is still true, it has been a few years since I have been involved, however at the time some of the cargo airlines and Air Canada were the only airlines setup to handle this cargo. WestJet at the time was not able to handle it for some reason.

The traditional supply chain started with extracting the material from the core of a reactor in Chalk River, running down to processing facility in Ottawa, flown off to Boston for packaging into generators then shipped to hospitals all over the world including back in Canada. There is a group in Saskatoon that has been working on using linear accelerators to produce the material instead of using a reactor. Either way very short half-life and air transport is critical.

SparseFlyer

Does anyone know if AC is fully certified for time critical pharma cargo?

Fiordland

I know they fly time critical pharma cargo. I am not aware of any special certification. There could be.

Nuclear material is a bit more involved in that CNSC would be involved from the licensing side of it.

SparseFlyer

Aren't a lot of pharma materials/medical devices equipped with radioactive/nuclear/biohazard material (sorry, not my field so the terms are probably poorly used and or chosen)?

I would assume that, at least as far as commercial cargo is concerned, that the two would be somewhat intertwined.

KenHamer

Ironic... now that they have the shipping thing all sorted, Chalk River is closing down: Scientists racing to save vital medical isotopes imperiled by shabby reactors

Fiordland

The Chalk River reactor is shutdown and use to be the worlds largest supplier. You cant use a power reactor, it has to be a relatively high power research reactor with some very specific design attributes. These are typically 40+ year old reactors. There is a reactor in Belgium as well as one in South Africa that have take up the slack. This material does end up as priority cargo on commercial airlines all over the world and frequently going across boarders. Canada is focused on developing a linear accelerator alternatives.

Fiordland

There is lots of nuclear material that has nothing to do with pharma as well as lots of pharma that is not nuclear. On the prairies you find it in equipment used to xray pipelines.

There can be an overlap between pharma and nuclear material. Heath Canada regulates one and CNSC regulates the other. My experience has been the regulators get together and decide for a given license who is going to take the lead and then the other regulator is still involved but works through the other. I am more familiar with the issues of making the stuff. I suspect Transport Canada has to be involved in the mix when it comes to how its transported.

This video is from the UK in the 1950s and shows a novel British approach....

They way it is done these days is the generator sits in a box that has been lined with interlocking lead bricks. At that point you can hand it off to FedEx if you wanted to.

There are companies the specialise in logistics of all types of pharma. ATS (the ground handling people) have a division called ATS Healthcare that specializes in pharma requiring special handling and temperature controls.

SparseFlyer

Thank you for the very interesting update.

We always talk about passenger commercial operations on these boards, but very rarely about cargo.

Thanks again.

I was under the impression that there was some kind of DGR Cat. X cert for this kind of cargo beyond the standard DGR certs for handlers, and then another on top for airline rating.

yyznomad

Actually, we talk often about drunk cargo.

SparseFlyer

Yeah well, I was referring to interesting cargo topics oooohhhhifjdjiejsbbsdidieeguegu