Blood Product Supply for a Helicopter Emergency Medical Service

<b><i>Background:</i></b> Long patient transport times to trauma centers are a well-known problem in sparsely populated regions with a low hospital density. Transfusion of red blood cell concentrates (RBC) and plasma improves outcome of trauma patients with severe bleeding. Helicopter emergency services (HEMS) are frequently employed to provide early advanced medical care and to reduce time to hospital admission. Supplying HEMS with blood products allows prehospital transfusion and may help to prevent exsanguination or prolonged hemorrhagic shock. We have investigated the maintenance of blood product quality under air transport conditions and the logistical steps to introduce a HEMS blood depot into routine practice. <b><i>Methods:</i></b> A risk analysis was performed and a validation plan developed. A special, commercially available transport container for blood products was identified. Maintenance of temperature conditions between 2 and 6°C in the box were monitored at ambient temperatures up to 35°C over 48 h. Quality of blood products before and after helicopter air transport were evaluated including (1) for RBCs: hemoglobin, hematocrit, hemolysis rate; (2) for thawed plasma: aPTT, INR, single clotting factor activities. The logistics for blood supply of the regional HEMS were developed by the transfusion service of the Greifswald University Hospital in collaboration with the in-hospital transport team, the HEMS team, and the HEMS operator. <b><i>Results:</i></b> The transport container maintained a temperature below 6°C up to 36 h at 35°C ambient temperature. Vibration during helicopter operation did not impair quality of RBC and thawed plasma. To provide blood products for HEMS at least two transport containers and an additional set of cooling tiles is needed as the cooling tiles need a special temperature priming over 20 h. The two boxes were used at alternate days. To reduce wastage, RBCs and thawed plasmas were exchanged every fourth day and reintegrated into the blood bank inventory for further in-hospital use. <b><i>Conclusions:</i></b> Supplying HEMS with RBCs and plasma is feasible. Helicopter transport has no negative impact on blood product quality. The logistic challenges require close collaboration between the HEMS team and the blood transfusion service.

Study on Radiation Dose Calculation of PWR Spent Fuel Storage and Transportation

With the rapid development of nuclear energy, spent fuel will accumulate in large quantities. Spent fuel is generally cooled and placed in a storage pool, and then transported to a reprocessing plant at an appropriate time. Because spent fuel is content with a high level of radiation, spent fuel storage and transportation safety play important roles in the nuclear safety. Radiation dose safety are checked and validated using source analysis and Monte Carlo method to establish a radiation dose rate calculation model for PWR spent fuel storage pool and transport container. The calculation results show that the neutron and photon dose rates decrease exponentially with increase of water level under normal condition of storage pool. The attenuation multiples of neutron and photon dose rates are 4.64 and 1.59, respectively. According to radiation dose levels in different water height situations, spent fuel pool under loss of coolant accident can be divides into five workplaces. They are supervision zone, regular zone, intermittent zone, restricted zone and radiation zone. Under normal condition of transport container, the dose rates at the surface of the container and at a distance of 1 m from the surface are 0.1759 mSv/h and 0.0732 mSv/h, respectively. The dose rates decrease with the increasing radius of break accident, and dose rate at the surface of the transport container is 0.278 mSv/h when the break radius is 20 cm. Transport container conforms to the radiation safety standards of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This study can provide some reference for radiation safety analysis of spent fuel storage and transportation.

REPRODUCIBILITY OF RADON-IN-WATER MEASUREMENTS BY EMANOMETRY TECHNIQUE

The emanometry test method is one of the detection techniques of radon in water satisfying requirements of Directive 2013/51/Euratom with regards to the detection limit. Quality assurance (QA) procedures were developed and implemented for a measuring system relying on such a technique. These procedures mainly address the following: (i) the assembling of each component of the degassing circuit, (ii) the sample transfer from the transport container to the degassing vessel and (iii) the control of all the influencing quantities. Three identical measuring systems have been used to analyse in parallel 39 water samples with the aim to evaluate the effectiveness of QA procedures in terms of reproducibility. The results showed quite low variability (&lt;15% for the 84% of measurements in the range 10–100 Bq L−1) among the three different measuring systems.

Finite Element Method for Thermal Design of Radioactive Material Transport Packages

In this paper, a simplified typical radioactive material transport container model is used to change the thickness of the container insulation layer and the thickness of the heat sink respectively. The finite element method is used to simulate the heat transfer, and a quantitative optimization of the heat transfer performance of the radioactive material transport container is given.