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Duct Tape
CandyMan writes: "The incredible story of the 15-year-old kid who built a nuclear reactor in his mother's toolshed, using common household objects, aluminium foil and duct tape. Sample quote: 'When David's Geiger counter began picking up radiation five doors from his mom's house, he decided that he had "too much radioactive stuff in one place", and began to dissasemble the reactor'." Well, I tried to check this out and see if it was for real, and I found a much longer version of the same article which appears legit, if still rather unbelievable. If any of you irradiate yourselves, you didn't read about it here, okay?
You moron. The reactor wasn't created by a group of students, except insofar as they work working under the guidance and supervision of Enrico Fermi -- you may have heard of him. It wasn't on the football field, but under the stands. It wasn't an uncontrolled reaction, but very much controlled; so it wasn't stopped by a guy with an axe, although they did have someone ready to drop the control rods by cutting the suspension cable in the event of an emergency.
Kids have lots of money these days. $3,350? The average 15-year-old has already spent that much for Eminem albums.
I guess if he absorbed enough radiation to render himself sterile, he'd be eligible for a Darwin Award.
Too bad the kids at Columbine didn't have one of those. Would have done away with those annoying jocks for good!
Just remeber that, all that's needed to create a nice *boom*. It's considered a "sub-munition", used to take out cities the size of Manhatten.
:)
Lots of articles on how to "aquire" the uranium, and refine it to plutonium. Besides, getting a hold of uranium is not as hard as you would think. You can order quantities of 10-20lbs of unrefined ore online, for around $3-4.50/lb.
Make two 5lbs shells of plutonium, put a seperator between them. Remeber 10lbs can create critical mass, wrap with high yeild explosive ignite all at the same time. Big boom.
Just remeber that while uranium isn't too toxic, plutonium is...nasty stuff it is. Ahh the wonders of university physics.
I do not support nuclear weapons, or nuclear poliferation. Too bad we can't put the genie back in the bottle hmm?
Although I never normally post, I did notice that this thread was really plumbing the depths of stupidity and gullibility, even for Slashdot...
o n. html
So, in my attempt to explain this away:
Americium Oxide was originally sold by the Atomic Energy Commision (now under responsibility of the Department of Energy) of the US for about US$1000 a GRAM. A gram is enough to supply 5,000 smoke detectors with Americium.
Just think about how much fissionable material you need to run a reactor. A uranium fuel pellet is as big as a pencil eraser. Also, these are HEAVY elements, heavier than lead. So one would need a lot more than a gram of Americium, supposing one could collect 5,000 smoke detectors to get it.
If you want to know more, here's the US government information on how to procure various elements:
http://www.ornl.gov/isotopes/
In particular, Americium 241:
http://www.ornl.gov/isotopes/r_am241.html
Here's the link to the sales staff at Los Alamos National Labs:
http://pearl1.lanl.gov/isotopes/order_informati
If you need more info on how much Americium is needed for a smoke detector, check out the Uranium Information Centre of Australia:
http://www.uic.com.au/nip35.htm
Check out the Anti-Nuclear Alliance of Western Australia to find out sheer quantities of fuel needed to fuel a reactor for a year:
http://www.anawa.org.au/chain/index.html
Now get your heads out of the clouds and get back to work.
moc.liamtoh@ihsoyotamah
http://www.rushmagazine.com
Still in the navy. I just ICQed some friends, and apparently he is getting out sometime this summer.
I think he plans on going to college when he gets out.
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I was off at college when he was actually raided, so I don't know for sure, but I don't think they threatened him with jail time, as he cooperated with them from the beginning, and told them where he had obtained everything.
I do know that he was extremely worried for a while that he would have to pay for the cleanup.
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I'll ask him once the movie comes out - I remember hearing that there is one in the works.
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I don't remember him ever making nitro-glycerine, but I know he used to make a lot of thermite. He lost his eyebrows a few times setting off large charges in the woods somewhere.
He got the detectors from a surplus catalog - some place was selling lots of non-working electronics that had been stored out in the rain, and one of the items for sale was several cases of wrecked smoke detectors.
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I went to high school with him, and was in the same scout troop as him (Troop 371).
We were in the same circle of (sometimes self proclaimed) weirdos who were all obsessive about one thing or another, and hung out together.
I remember when he brought in a giger counter, and we checked the food in the east center caf to see if it was radioactive. We had a good laugh when we got a blip from the soft serve ice cream.
Later, when he started carrying around radioactive material in his pockets at school, and showing me what looked like radiation burns, I tried to not hang out with him as much, and switched seats in Anthropology so that I wasn't right next to him.
It was a weird time - I was at MSU when I got the paniced call from him saying that the EPA was currently raiding his house, and wanting to know what catalog he had ordered the smoke detectors from.
The author who did the Harper's article was working on a book late last year - he asked me a few questions about Dave. I wonder when it will come out...
If anyone has any questions about Dave, just reply to this, and I'll answer what I remember...
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Maybe you also don't worry about having genital cancer later in your life either ? I don't know...but I think there just MIGHT be slightly safer methods of population control. Then again....I guess if that sounds like a good idea to you...go ahead. Survival of the fittest, I suppose ;)
I think the ethos behind these devices is press the button then run like hell.
Well now that we know where it is, we can consult Map-a-Blast!
>square reserved for a monument, the University of >Chicago is building a new undergraduate dorm. Now
>that seems a bit amusing.
hey, we've already tried everything else to cut down on undergraduate pregnancy. If this works out, we'll use a similar method in the boy's gyms in high schools . . .
hawk
Just a thought... he may become a poster boy for the revived emphasis on nuclear power.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Since when was there an "Atomic Energy" merit badge? Never heard of that one when I was in scouts.
-kidlinux.
Well, anyone else who finds similarities between David Kahn and Lawrence Waterhouse from Cryptonomicon disturbing? Even the Navy part matches...
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"Man in the Moon and other weird things" - wfmh.org.pl/thorgal/Moon/
Coincidentally, at last week's Detroit Electronic Music Festival, there were two girls walking around in dresses made entirely of duct tape. They were kind enough to pose for a picture.
No no, that was a controlled reaction. The first uncontrolled reaction was at the top of a tower in the middle of the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico.
The second uncontrolled reaction was a few thousand feet over Hiroshima, Japan.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
or some ignorant reporter using the word "superfund" out of its precisely defined legal context, as they have been known to do reepeateedly.
Other useful link:
d .h t ml
http://tis.eh.doe.gov/techstds/standard/standar
It's the Online Approved DOE Technical Standards -- including
* Licensed Reactor Nuclear Safety Criteria Applicable to DOE Reactors,
* DOE Fundamentals Handbook, Nuclear Physics and Reactor Theory,
and
* Criteria for Packaging and Storing Uranium-233-Bearing Materials
Wonderful stuff!
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
You know, you can study a printout of the DeCSS code all you want, but no matter how hard you try, the code will not compile and assemble itself in front of you. You need to acquire a computer, type it into the computer, obtain an operating system, obtain compiler software, and run the compiler on the computer before you can use a system combining the software, an operating system, a computer, and a DVD drive.
Yet the printout of the DeCSS source code is considered a "device" under current judicial rulings.
Steven E. Ehrbar
So if an event occurred over x days ago, although most of us may be unfamiliar with it, it's not valid /. material? I say it's news.
This kid made a great attempt at making a frickin' low-grade nuclear reactor out of duct tape. I'd say that we've got the "nerd" part covered.
Troll.
-Waldo
But radioactive things don't glow!
Uhhh, then why was radium used for luminous watch dials and such? And if I remember right, cesium-137 has a lovely luminous blue glow (not that you'd want to play with it). Not all radioisotopes emit visible light, but some certainly do.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
Well, the article says that he was actually able to build a neutron gun to transform Thorium 232 into Uranium 233. If he decided to get a little more, he could have a small sphere of sufficiently enriched U-233, and along with the beryllium he got, and some high explosive arranged in the proper way, would be sufficient to create a crude nuclear device. Makes the term "nuclear terrorism" sound a lot more ominous... A 15-year-old kid was able to build a makeshift nuclear reactor in his backyard with common household objects. How hard can it be for determined terrorist organizations to build a nuclear device? Isn't even necessary to build a bomb, all they need is the neutron gun and some cobalt (which is not even a restricted material). In a few days, you'd have a chunk of Cobalt-60 more radioactive than Chernobyl, and it'd just be a matter of grinding it down and dispersing it in a suitable area... Enough to poison an area to all kinds of life for many many years.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
Unless it's 99.9% pure, you can't use it to make Nitroglycerin, or you make it like 10x as dangerous (as if it wasn't bad enough).
A bit of the wrong heavy metal contamination makes nitroglycerin very, very sensitive.
Did a yahoo search for David Hahn, and pulled up this.
http://goatlocker.exis.net/fy01e7.txt
(search for Hahn).
Same person?
The I.C. just said that Flay wasn't a chef. At the end of the contest, Flay stood on his cutting board. The I.C. said that Flay wasn't a chef because the board is sacred. The audience appeared stunned. I know I was.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
So . . . the kid needed $3,350. Let's say he worked a minimum wage job, and he cleared $5/hr,
which seems like a fairly conservative assumption.
3350/5 = 670 hours.
assuming he worked 20 hrs. a week . . . .
670/20 = 33.5 weeks, or about 8 months.
That doesn't seem unreasonable to me. Other than the part about working at minimum wage that long.
And, of course, he could have cleared a lot more dough mowing lawns or from tips as a waiter.
While David may have attempted to build a breeder reactor, he certainly didn't succeed. Even if you don't get past the first page of the article you'll notice a synopsis: "When a teenager attempts to build a breeder reactor."
What really tells are his own words:
"Even though there was no critical pile, I know that some of the reactions that go on in a breeder reactor went on to a minute extent."(page 11 of the Harper's article)
And he was talking about a device he built like this:
"David took the highly radioactive radium and americium out of their respective lead casings and, after another round of filing and pulverizing, mixed those isotopes with beryllium and aluminum shavings, all of which he wrapped in aluminum foil. What were once the neutron sources for his guns became a makeshift "core" for his reactor. He surrounded this radioactive ball with a "blanket" composed of tiny foil-wrapped cubes of thorium ash and uranium powder, which were stacked in an alternating pattern with carbon cubes and tenuously held together with duct tape."
This doesn't approach "building a nuclear reactor" by a long shot.
I wouldn't say I was trolling.. just posting an odd idea to see if anyone had anything interesting to say on the subject. Other than the poke at my bad spellin the posts have indeed been informative. I doubt I'd need a semi sized vehicle but I will agree I'd probably need something a lot bigger than my vague idea. :)
:)
:)
My actual tinker project for this summer is an electric motorcycle that can be recycled in the field by a retractable solar panel. Someone from the solar car team mentioned people who've built models that worked well and that sounds awesome to me. Hehe I can handle solar panels much easier than radioactive materials.
Any alternative powered vehicle is interesting to me though.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
I've been toying with the idea of making a nucleur powered car as a tinkering project. I'm fairly sure I know how to do most of the design and production but I'd be interested in any suggestions Dave might have on obtaining the needed nucleur material and not killing myself handling it. :)
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Interestingly, Marc Laidlaw would later become a writer for another project with a nuclear theme--a little first-person shooter by the name of Half-Life. (As a little in-joke, some of his books can be seen in one of the lockers in the locker room in the early part of the game.)
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Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
What about bathroom tiles on the back of a Jupiter-going spaceship with three anuses and three mouths and cool shades and stuff?
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Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
reactors are all around us
they built a reactor here in cambridge (UK) in a squash court
(its covered in concreate now it was an experiment)
there is an old reactor just under the street in Greenwich mark thomas product did a show on it and opened up a art gallery across the road showing what it could do (this was the same guy who got up in a baloon and sailed over the NSA station(you arnt allowed to fly over resticted airspace) muttering about bombs and couter threats and drugs to his mum who asked him if he was on drugs because of the conversation )
but the really funny thing is no one really seemed to care !
yep radtion makes you impotent so think of the nurse next time you go to the hospital for an X ray
get over it
regards
john jones
The article appeared in Harper's November 1998 issue, No. 1782, Vol. 297; Pg. 59; ISSN: 0017-789X , if you care. phear m4h m4]) l00kup sk|11z!!
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
He never made a nuclear reactor....He was TRYING to make a nuclear reactor. Your argument may indicate why he would have failed but it doesn't mean that it didn't happen. That's like saying early attempts to build airplanes were hoaxes because, "that design was flawed and would never have flown"
Jeez, all you have to do around here is spout a few "facts" (5000 units per gram blah blah blah) and you get put up to +5 informative.
*sing* I'm a karma whore and I'm okay....
I work all night and I post all day
In Soviet Russia, hot grits put YOU down THEIR pants.
One of the people mentioned in the story is David Minnaar, who works for the Michigan DEP. He's certainly a real person; see Antique crock turns out to be radioactive and Michigan DEP site with his e-mail address (minnaard@state.mi.us) and phone number (517-335-8197).
Another person mentioned is Donald Erb, mentioned on International Isotope Society Membership List, and can be reached at
U.S. Department of Energy
22404 Goshen School Road
Gaithersburg , MD , 20882-9801
Phone: (301) 253-5530
Fax: (301) 903-5434
So at the minimum they're real people, and can certainly easily confirm or deny the story or its details, unless they refuse to talk about it, which would be a bit silly.
There was a long cross-posted thread in alt.folklore.urban, sci.physics, and sci.skeptic at the beginning of last year about this, Some good posts:
- the young Mr. Hahn did not build a nuclear breeder reactor...
- one about his Geiger counter readings: More likely, he was measuring stuff on his clothes, or perhaps his body...
- Actually, I'm not AT ALL impressed with the young Mr. Hahn's "accomplishments"...
The existence of David Hahn is plausible; that he accomplished anything resembling a nuclear reactor isn't. It takes a lot of math and physics to build a safe nuclear reactor, but it only takes a pile of radioactive material to get radioactive readings. As extracting elements is pretty much the most basic task in chemistry, and it's all the guy had to do, I believe that he could have done it. Calling what he made a nuclear breeder reactor is pure journalistic hoo-hah (or more charitably, gross exaggeration)...actually, the journalist merely implies that's what Hahn did, by using the phrase "breeder reactor" over and over again. A good lesson in the difference between what's actually said and what's implied. He may have had a dangerous nuclear pile, but that's far from a genuine reactor.Remember, this is 19th century chemistry that he was doing, and had the advantage of extracting radioactive materials from already purified sources.
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Make mine methylphenidate.
Three years folks. Just because most of the folk here had missed/forgotten this one doesn't make it 'news'.
-ck
-- This sig is only a test. If this were a real sig it would say something witty. --
Retraction: Reporters in Michigan are retracting an alert concerning monstrous "bunnies." These "bunnies" are talentless dancers dressed as 8-foot tall green bunnies, and were only eating the people stipulated in their contract.
CmdrTaco, a shut-in reporter for an internet news-a-like based out of Michigan, issued the following staement: "We jumped the gun, and mistook an ad campaign for the new XEON for something bad. INTEL's lawyers have corrected us, and we are retracting everything they tell us too. Micro$oft sucks!!!"
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Pinto Drive, Commerce Twp, MI
N42 35.641' W83 27.383'
Approximately the center of town.
FP
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
I believe that the radioactive material was used to excite a phosphorecent paint. The material itself doesn't glow.
Tritium has a half life of 12.5 years, and is a gas.
It's used inside small fluorescent tubes, as it's a pure low-energy beta emitter. No radiation escapes the tube, end the beta (electron) emission causes the tube to fluoresce (like any other fluorescent light).
My watch has tritium gas-lights on it. Sometimes, these are called Traser(tm) lights.
I believe it's also the most expensive substance by weight known to man.
Is it commercially available? He said commercially available. Some elements (Californium, for example) are just plain not available.
You forgot the Swiss Army Knife
So a quick search of the national Superfund cleanup list http://www.epa.gov/superfund/sites/query/basic.htm Turns up three radioactive Superfund sites in Michigan
But Commerece Township is which is the actual town name. Golf Manor is a sub division.
This story is a complete load of BS. When I read the Nitric Acid bit I thought, "This kid can get the NRC to tell him how to build a reactor, he can extract thorium from mantles and he can pose as a "professor", but he can't find the ever elusvie Nitric Acid?" I'm not sure if I remember my 'Anarchist's Cookbook' very well (nor my Organic Chemistry), but I think to make Nitroglycerin it require glycerine and nitric acid.. could be wrong though.
Two more things. I work with small amounts of radioactivity on a daily basis and I find it incredibly hard to believe the radium story. He was supposedly "driving by" a antiques store when he picked up the vial of radium paint with the geiger counter. C'mon. The ability to detect radiation is proportional to the inverse of the distance from the source squared. I can't imagine how hot that clock would have been if he could detect it in his car while driving by.
And. With quotes like, "I'll pay any some [sic] of money..." it is not possible that he could have carried on a conversation by mail, posing as a teacher or a professor.
Blech... this is pure crap!
Anyone else catch that his high school principal supposedly believed his girlfriend was using baloons to smuggle funky chemicals to him so he could continue his experiments?
Do you buy this? I'm not sure if I do. Even if the principal was completely clueless about science, which he probably is or he'd be a real teacher rather than an administrator, I have a hard time believing that anyone with a triple digit IQ and a lick of common sense would fear that someone's girlfriend was using baloons to smuggle strange chemicals around. Is this the kind of person we should have running a school?
Ultimately I do believe he was exactly that clueless. Until I'd read this story I'd almost forgotten just how clueless the adults around me seemed to be when I was younger. Their absolute ignorance of anything technical or scientific combined with the strange assumption that I was doing something dangerous made for some very bizzare behavior on their part. I'm sure that many others here know exactly what I mean. To me it was always highly annoying to be treated with awe or fear by someone older simply because I demonstrated the smallest modicum of understanding of something like how a television worked.
The other possibility is that the principal was simply being an utter jerk. He wanted to show that he didn't need an excuse to be a jerk and so came up with the most outlandish and unsubstantiated "reason" he could think of. I've seen that happen a lot too. It would kind of explain why he's a principal and not a teacher.
Lee Reynolds
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
That's scary. That's like what were effectively suicide cleanup crews at Chernobyl running with fuel rods - it'll not hurt you if you're quick!
Poor bastards.
You hardly need to be a genius to make nitro-glycerine. I won't go into the details in case some fool decides to try, but suffice it to say that most soup recipes are more complicated. I'm surprised if he really did make it without having an accident - it's extremely unstable. a friend of my family blew one of his hands off and severly disfigured his face.
Correct. You need a chunk of weapons grade plutonium about the size of a base ball to make a fission device, and while not so much, still a reasonable quantity to go critical. I remember seeing the "Fat Man & Little Boy" documentatry about the Manhatten project and how they had one criticality experiment go wrong and kill one of the scientists. They said that basically once you see the blue flash it's too late - you've already had sufficient radiation exposure to kill you.
So the neighbors saw this kid's shed glowing? Hmmm.... good urban legend.
That's not alot of money. Ever heard of dealing drugs? Someone like this person could make them! It only costs about $25 a kilo to make methamphetamine and about $10 a gram to make a single run of LSD. Aren't drug laws great for raising funds?
Sorry for the confusion, LionKimbro. I really should have been more specific. I should have said "lifetime allowable dosage of radiation for a person working in a US Navy nuclear specialty." I'm sure there's a "government recommended maximum civillian dosage," and it's set at a very harmless and generally un-reached number.
Here's a little background on the Navy nuclear field:
The enlisted and officer personnel that actually work on the naval reactor systems (ratings of MM, EM and ET, plus officer billets) go through a special school at Naval Weapons Station Charleston in South Carolina.
As far as exposure goes, I'm not going to get into the exact specifics & numbers. (I'm not sure exactly where 'common knowledge' stops and 'confidential information' starts.) Numbers don't matter in any case, as I don't have exposure readings for Petty Officer Hahn.
The point is: The Navy has chosen a number for the amount of exposure you're allowed. David Hahn exceeded this number before he enlisted. Therefore the Navy will not allow him to work in a situation where he will receive artificial additional exposure. The Navy is not interested in medically retiring him and handing him a disability check because something turned cancerous, all because he went near a reactor... again.
The Navy does understand the risks involved -- and they certainly minimize their exposure as much as they can, both to radiation risks and litigation risks!
Petty Officer Hahn is quite famous here around NWS Charleston. Every Power School class hears about the 'Radioactive Boyscout.' Curious about what he's doing now? He's an 'airdale' -- he works on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier.
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
Oops.
So, just you remember that kids -- choices you make in your youth can limit your career options further down the road.
I sure think he didn't want quite that result, though.
His reaction to it is interesting. (To paraphrase Reader's Digest):
- David is now in the Navy, where he reads about steroids, melanin, genetic codes, prototype reactors, amino acids, and criminal law. He explains "...I wanted to make a scratch in life." As far as his radiation exposure, "I've still got time." He goes on to venture that "I don't believe I took more than 5 years off my life."
Quite the merit badge."...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
Same here. I think it was in "Harper's".
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CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
"Yeah, somehow I don't see Harpers magazine being allowed to publish instructions to make dangerous radioactive devices!"
In fact, it almost certainly would. Although the Supreme Court decided U.S. v Progressive in favor of the government, it lifted the injunction later.
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
It's actually harder than it looks to build a nuclear device. You can get some fairly detailed instructions (short of the actual neutron flow mathematics) from the Nuclear Weapons FAQ (http://www.scifig.com/milnet/nukeweap/Nfaq0.html) .
The DoD conducted a trial in 1967 by getting 3 physics grads to design a device. They succeeded in less than a year!! Now, with the internet, a 15 year old can probably design one themselves.
Basically, as mentioned before, the easy bit is finding the raw materials and refining them to weapons grade munitions. The difficult bits (in what I see as order of difficulty) are:
i) Shaping the charge exactly right to form a perfectly spherical shock wave around the fissile material.
ii) Shaping the material properly to implode spherically.
iii) Doing all this in such a manner as not to arouse suspicion - you need some fairly specialised tools to accomplish it - a pocket knife and a home lathe probably aren't enough.
As soon as you order the materials in a non-secure manner, the CIA are probably going to have your number on a 'watch' list. If it comes up a couple of times then expect a visit at some stage. Hell - I'm probably flagged from mentioning all this in a public forum.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
I wonder whose reach I come under then as a legal alien? Probably the FBI/DOE until I leave the country. Maybe I'm ok because they'd have to (heaven forbid) cooperate with each other.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
One explanation is here.
I had previously heard that it was originally named "duck tape" because the fabric that it was made out of was duck, a kind of canvas. I can't find a reference for that story, though.
Eh, who need to use the internet?
IIRC, this was in Reader's Digest a while back.
Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Did you click the link? No. The link has a comic that is all but word-for-word what this guy said comparing DeCSS to bomb making instructions.
In the movie "The Manhatten Project", that kid builds an atomic bomb about the size of a tool box. And as we all know movies would never ever lie to us and always double check their facts...
If that was case, shouldn't it be called "hamster tape" instead?
Hey, gimme an EMP device! That's ll nuke those pesky boom boxes going on all night at maximum volume, robbing you of an honest man's sleep. EMP's are far more practical than old fashioned methods such as water buckets, or manually going down to the basement to switch off their power supply!
$3350 is peanuts for a motivated teenager. My son raised about twice this amount by the time he was 16 to finance a year-long exchange trip to Germany during his junior year in high school. His job: walking dogs.
-Tom Duff
Half way down the page it says this story appeared in:
November 1998 issue of Harpers Magazine.
CBS "Morning News"
CBS "Evening News" on October 14, 1998
Reader's Digest March 1999
The Sunday Times January 17, 1999.
I looked in the Sunday times back-issue and couldn't find the article, maybe someone else can....
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/cgi-bin/BackIssue
CBC news archives seem to not go back farther than Dec 98.
"Any speech can be functional."
You know, you can study your physics book all you want, but no matter how hard you try, a breeder reactor will not assemble itself in front of you. You need to obtain actual, and very very rare (and immediately physically dangerous) materials.
Software is a peculiar sort of speech in that it can also be considered a "device" (I don't know who started that terminology). But a physics books (speech) and breeder reactor (device) do *NOT* overlap like software does (I think this is the point the poster was trying to get accross when he described a non-empty set containing DeCSS, but NOT a physics book).
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
To make an atomic weapon, you'd need a higher grade of fissile material. Americium and Thorium won't cut it. You need U-235 or Plutonium. The former is incredibly hard to separate from common Uranium (mostly U-238, which is only barely radioactive) while the latter is only made in reactors, and thus you'd have to buy it from your friendly local Soviet-salvage dealer....
The writing seems, well, somehow it just seems like a hoax. The details are too neat, the
style of writing a little too offhand, the interviews with people don't ring true. I dunno, it just doesn't have the "ring of truth" to it.
:)
How we know is more important than what we know.
MacGyver would just find everything he needed conveniently lying around, then he'd reach into his pocket for his swiss army knife, not finding it he'd remember "ah darn, that's right, it's season three - no bombs, no knifes". Around then a million views switch over to watch The A-Team (who are co-incidentally blow torching together a tank).
How we know is more important than what we know.
Try this instead:
"Oh my God! My son took apart the smoke detector, and, and, oh my God! I think he ate parts of it! Some parts are radioactive, right? Which ones? Which ones??!!?"
... and the person on the other end gladly tells which parts.
- - - - -
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
What if I write bridge software that will accept as input the text of the physics book, and outputs a decrypted DVD? And if the software in all other instances was a screen saver?
Suppose I wrote a shell script that took Jack Valenti speaking the CSS_Descramble code, piped it into a text-to-speech converter, compiled it and used it? Which would you ban?
/' has only one purpose, and oh! sometimes it can be used to break the law! That's some potent functional speech right there! BAN IT!
'rm -rf
Calling functional speech a device is a rhetorical trick, it is not genuine. The only reason the word "device" is being used is because it is what can banned from trafficking by 1201.
The MPAA would call DeCSS a "frosty lager" if they thought it would help the courts close their eyes to what they were really banning. They've alreay called it biological warfare and a crowbar. Calling this post "fecal matter" doesn't make it any less speech or any less protected by the first amendment, just like calling a brutal murder "speech" doesn't make it any less an action.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
Take a look at Dr. Touretzky's Gallery of CSS descramblers. It's got DeCSS in nearly every way you can imagine.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
The computer's creators did not have DeCSS in mind when they built it, it could host any number of different programs.
What does that matter? I don't see where you're going with this. It is often said that the best tools are those which have uses beyond those imagined by their creator. This "purpose of the creator" argument is interesting metaphysically, but has no bearing on what is speech and what isn't.
DeCSS can be treated as a "black box" and used without understanding what it says. [...] If you really want to stretch your definitions, a VCR is speech
Um, but I don't. A VCR is a physical device. You can't print a VCR out and carry it around. You can't save it to a floppy disk. A VCR is a machine. I never claimed my argument was transitive. In fact, I said the opposite: Calling functional speech a device doesn't make it Not Speech, and calling a physical device speech likewise fails (though not always!). All text is protected speech, and there are actions and objects that are protected, too! DeCSS is neither object nor action. It is text. The First Amendment applies, "device" moniker notwithstanding.
You better bet that the controller code for a VCR is speech, 'cause its protected by copyright. Every time I start my Xerox 4025 laser printer at work, it says "Copyright Xerox 1999." The printer isn't copyrighted, but the controller code is. You can't upload the printer to a web page, but you can upload the operating system. It is protected text.
People perform actions to "send a message" but that doesn't mean freedom of speech allows you to "tell" someone you don't like them by punching them.
You and I agree. Didn't you read my post?
Computer programs are devices first, and speech second, if at all.
Computers are devices. Programs are instructions. Instructions, last time I checked, are speech. Or is telling you to "Clean your room" a device because it is an instruction? How about x=(-b +/- sqrt(b^2-4ac))/2a? 'rm -rf /'?
The manner in which I constructed the sentance, emphasizing functionality over readability proves nothing. Speech that is meant to be used and not just read is still speech. Call it a device if you want, but, boy I can still look at it, print it out, read it, understand what it "says." It even still smells like speech. I don't care what you call it. You can't prohibit speech. DeCSS is a complex series of instructions. Text. Protected.
Fair use is common to countries without such constitutional guarantees. It originated under British common law, and was retained after the colonies seperated. It predates the first amendment.
Clever but irrelevant. We're talking about what's illegal in the US. The constitution is paramount. If it weren't in the constitution I wouldn't be arguing with you, regardless of when fair use originated or where else it is found.
There are plenty of laws prohibiting distribution of information
Name one. And it can't be a copyright case, or be justified by compelling state interest--because those are constitutional justifications. Even NDAs are limited by the first amendment. I can contract away my right to speech and still exercise it!
Grow up and face reality. "Shouldn't" is a more realistic word to apply to government than "can't."
Right. I'll remember to look the other way when you are trying to give me instructions some day and the government hauls you off for trafficking in an illegal "device." After all, I have to face reality that the government will violate the constitution. How pathetic.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
A sculpture can be speech.
I said it many times, but I'll say it again. Text is always speech. Physical objects and actions CAN BE speech, but aren't always.
What part aren't you understanding?
A phrase that's batted about on the Open Law discussion list is "You can call a tail a leg, but a dog still only has four legs." Calling text a device does not change that it is text, and is protected by the First Amendment.
Computer software is a list of instructions, and lists of instructions in any language, readable or not, are protected. There are no exceptions.
The court of public opinion is where the battle against such laws will be won or lost, and it will be swayed by consequences, not technicalities of law.
Why was the DMCA passed, then? If congress had asked anyone, would we have said "sure! eliminate fair use, that's OK by me!"?
Public opinion matters not a whit, and the prohibition of computer software is the consequense we're talking about. This isn't fiction or supposition, this is real life. You're the one who's out to lunch, thinking it is about technicalities. There is an acutal software program banned by an actual law. How much more real do you want it to be?
Sure it's just fair use decryption software today... But next week it will be "circumventing" peer-to-peer software devices, or "hazardous" unauthorized HTTP server software devices.
Calling software a device just so it can be regulated is contrary to the First Amendment, and that amendment is there for a reason, not just to give it lip service. Dismiss the argument all you want, it's still valid.
Your "the gov't *always* violates the constitution" argument is hardly convincing. Why should I debate with someone who's given up?
If you want to take your populist argument to the people and rally the rabble, by all means, go for it. Don't think I'm not doing the same thing. However, it won't make a difference if there isn't a solid legal argument based on the constitution in front of the Supreme Court when they issue their ruling. They're the ones who decide whether or not populist decrypters like yourself will be criminals or will have their rights to fair use protected. Technicality or not.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
Wrong. They describe an action which can activate a specific device's intended function, they do not work together with another device to produce a new behavior not envisioned by the other device's creator
What is a padlock's intended function? To lock, and unlock when the right combination is applied. Wow, that's just what CSS does. Or are you claiming that CSS's creator didn't envision that CSS encoded movies would be descrambled?
DeCSS is an implementation of the CSS unlocking algorithm. It operates as intended. Your argument is not clear.
Regardless, your argument is a tar baby. I can use a newspaper to light a fire that burns down someone's house. You don't (can't) outlaw newspaper publishing because someone can use it to start a fire, whether intended by the publisher or not. Even if the newspaper contained a How-To on arson. The use of information is prohibitable, the distribution of information is not. Actions are illegal, not data. It's in the constitution.
Like most information, combinations serve a purpose, but do not perform a function.
Like all information, DeCSS does not perform a function. People who use it do. Padlocks don't unlock themselves, and neither do DVDs. All functional speech has an intention behind it. 'rm -rf /' is functional, but it only functions in a certain context--some unlawful, others not. In either case, somone (read: a legal entity) caused the function to occur. The use of information is prohibitable, the distribution of information is not.
The constitution does not require fair use, only that IP restrictions be temporary.
Wrong. The copyright clause is self-limiting in duration, but the first amendment is the reason fair use exists. The First Amendment is why copyrights are limited in scope (to distribution, public performance) as well as in time. The first amendment controls the copyright clause. You don't have to be a lawyer to know this stuff, but you should probably read about it before spouting off.
I don't agree with banning DeCSS, but I don't like to blow it out of proportion or talk about it in unrelated stories. I certainly don't like weaselly claims that it's not primarily a device for decrypting DVDs.
Well, it is bad etiquette to post offtopic commentary, but it wasn't really off topic to begin with. Your glib, imprecise response didn't help, though.
I never said DeCSS isn't primarily for decrypting DVDs, I don't think anyone on this thread did. I am saying that all speech can be functional, and that calling such functional speech a device does not exempt it from first amendment protections (which is what the studios are attempting to do). Congress has the power to control distribution of physical devices--but speech is right out. Functional or not.
The use of information is prohibitable, the distribution of information is not.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
Any speech can be functional. Calling functional speech a device doesn't change that it is speech, and is therefore protected.
DeCSS is as much as device as the launch codes for a nuclear missle, or the combo to my gym locker.
In the right context they can perform a function, but they are speech nonetheless. If you want to prohibit the function they perform, make "speech-devices" illegal to use, not to distribute--and realize that making DeCSS illegal to use would lay bare the decimation of constitutionally required fair use that this ban on dissemination disguises.
It's that easy. And that hard.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
Actually, it was in "Harpers" years ago.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
I've noticed that almost everything that was made around WWII, can be made in a privately owned machine shop today.
Seeing that the first nuke was made around WWII, it looks like all you need is the access to the materials. I'd also suggest some heavy radiation gear.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Is she a babe?
To a very old Bloom County strip which pertains to this? Something about Oliver Holmes Jr. and a bunch of watches.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
It's not. I saw an article like on 20/20 or something where they showed the shed where he was building the thing... The kid was completely open about the whole thing, too.
It's not. It was on like dateline or 20/20 a few years ago.
You are probably referring to the radio-thermal generators on board deep-space probes. These, as the other poster mentioned, are used to generate electricity when solar power would be insufficient.
It is a stretch to call them "reactors." They depend on the heat generated by radioactive decay (of plutonium, I think) which can be converted to electricity. They don't involve a controlled chain reaction, and produce considerably less energy than the same amount of radioactive material consumed in a conventional reactor. They also operate at a fixed, slowly decaying power level. But they are simple, compact, robust, and long-lived. So they are good for long-duration spaceflights (like to Saturn). Think more like a super battery than a reactor.
Just a wild-assed guess, but I would think that the energy density of gasoline would be much higher than the energy density of one of these sources. Certainly the peak power you could attain would be higher for gasoline+internal combustion engine.
By the way, nuclear submarines are substantially larger than the diesel equivalents. Real trade-offs are probably made to make them even moderately compact, the shielding is non-trivial, and the whole technology of nuclear sub propulsion is extremely closely guarded. The USA believes it gets a substantial strategic advantage from having nuclear subs, and the technical barriers are substantial (just look what a mess the Russians have made with their nuclear subs, with much less safe operation, and the Chinese nuclear sub reportedly spends most of its time hanging around its home port).
Yeah, somehow I don't see Harpers magazine being allowed to publish instructions to make dangerous radioactive devices!
What do you mean? It's not like Harper's published anything really dangerous... like DeCSS.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Golf Manor, according to the article, is a subdivision of Commerce, MI, which does exist. It has postal codes 48382 and 48390, and appears to be a suburb of Detroit. Pinto Drive, also mentioned in the article, doesn't show up on Yahoo! maps, but this is hardly surprising, considering.
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under-paid karma whore
And to further confuse the matter, the first time I saw it in print, when I bought some all those years ago, it was spelled Duck Tape: Duck-brand Duct Tape.
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under-paid karma whore
All that is very true!
And on that site today, except for the small square reserved for a monument, the University of Chicago is building a new undergraduate dorm. Now that seems a bit amusing.
UofC has a long history with nuclear reactors...homebuilt and otherwise. Most recent was a group of students (yes, students) who built a breeder reactor which was a one of the "impossible" items on the annual Universtiy of Chicago Scavenger Hunt.
Maybe that 15 year old should look at applying to the University of Chicago...he might find it a familiar environment!
The Army used to make and stockpile so-called 'nuclear munitions', sub-Hiroshima class nuclear bombs that would fit nicely in a small suitcase.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Sorry, but you can find nitric acid at a hardware store less than a mile from the place named in the Harper's article.. This poor kid undoubtably had to go there for the nitrates needed to make it himself (in gardening, in a quart sized silver can), so why the hell didn't he walk four aisles down into plumbing and buy one of the red half-gallon bottles of drain cleaner?
.sig: Now legally binding!
Yeah.. Half the soup recipes I've seen will explode as the nitrating bath does its magic.
Me, I did it right, from a 1930's Department of War publication, and I still lost 30 square feet of carpet when my dry ice gave early..
[soapbox]
NOTE TO SLASHDOT: If you want to make explosives, start with something simple. Gunpowder will probably do what you need. If it won't, for God's sake don't go beyond that! It's too easy to social engineer nitrogel or purchase nitrocellulose at any gun shop.
[/soapbox}
.sig: Now legally binding!
Yes, I've seen it.. And the story is real. I live less then 50 miles from the scene, so to speak. It's real.
And there are several designs that don't involve implosion of subcritical material to reach activation, nor the impolsive mirrors that design entails. That's right kiddies, no more adding 200kg of machined trinitrotoluene mirrors to your 10kg of wepons grade uranium!
Fat Man, the first nuclear device? Using plutonium, in the stead of the low-grade uranium, is plausible to fit in a suitcase with a little know-how.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Read up. Orwell, as in Mr. 1984, publically decried it as giving too much to the Russians *before* the critical value of Project Urchin was known.
I just thank deity they didn't know for certain till 1957, when the first Little Boy went live in Siberia.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Explain this to the Brownstone device. A 31lb nuclear munition the United States Department of Defense punished us with in the sixties. Expected yield was .7 Hiroshima devices, effective blast radius over three miles. Unfortunatly, thr mortar it was attached to had a range 1 mile less than that..
Don't ask me about the nuclear anti-aircraft missiles with a range 3 miles less than blast..
.sig: Now legally binding!
Wow, it's been years since I've seen a reference to "Night of the Lepus"
7 2)
For those interested here's linkage to get you hooked!
(gosh - I can't wait for the DVD!)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?Night+of+the+Lepus+(19
http://members.aol.com/shockcin/lepus.html
Wheeeee
I'd put the odds of that scenario at 5% -- tops.
And even if he did emerge from society's human resource management as some sort of Unabomber from Hell with Nothing Left to Live For, it is always possible to simply humiliate him for being one of those guys who are full-grown adults who haven't yet accepted their place in the world as "pay up you punk ass". These guys who are living in their "picked on" school-boy past are just such a joke. Why would anyone take them seriously when you can just put them in prison and rape them again and again and...
Seastead this.
I don't think you understand the concept of reactor "criticality" based on your above statement. I think you are trying to imply you need more material to sustain an uncontrolled supercritical reaction. Being critical in a reactor simply means you are producing the same amount of neutrons from fission that are required for the next "cycle" of the reaction to proceed at the SAME power. That is not a bad or dangerous thing.
"Alas, David's duties, as a lowly seaman, are of the deck-swabbing and potato-peeling variety. But long after his shipmates have gone to sleep, David stays up studying topics that interest him--currently steroids, melanin, genetic codes, antioxidants, prototype reactors, amino acids, and criminal law. And it is perhaps best that he does not work on the ship's eight reactors, for EPA scientists worry that his previous exposure to radioactivity may have greatly cut short his life."
The world we live in disgusts me. I'm heading off to Cornell Engineering this August. I think that in view of his raw audacity and intelligence, his parents shouldn't be forcing him into the Navy. After the "DOE, EPA, FBI, and NRC" got done disposing of David's hazardous waste, they should have thought for a second. If this is the only teenager they've found making a nuclear reactor in his back yard, perhaps they should have given him a full scholarship to any scientific University he wanted. The boy can't spell worth a dsmn, but he has the curiosity, drive, and intelligence to succeed at CalTech, MIT, or whatever, and be the next Newton. I hope that after the Armed Forces finishes grinding his soul to a pulp, and perhaps his body as well, in case of war, he attends a fine institution where he can meet other misunderstood geniuses like him, lives a hundred years, and "make[s] a scratch in life," just like he wants to, because he can. The fact that this person is not involved in nuclear research is a symptom of the disease that infects this country, right alongside our horrible international testing scores.
Actually, alpha and beta emissions are particles - gamma's a ray. That's why unstable isotopes degenerate into stable ones - they're giving off particles, not just energy.
Gamma's the energy radiation. And yeah, it's nasty.
It appears that someone has successfully set themselves up the bomb.
Ironic.
On February 25th Michael posted a story about building do-it-yourself X-ray units for hours of family enjoyment.
/. does shape our world.
Now we have a radioactive neighborhood in smalltown Michigan.
God have mercy on us all.
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
What he did was build a neutron source - which is not too hard, any alpha emitter and beryllium will do - and irradiated thorium and uranium. That will certainly give you a huge amount of all kinds of alpha, beta and gamma radiation. Actually neutron bombardment will turn just about anything radioactive. (But radioactive things don't glow! A popular misconception probably based on the Cerenkov radiation in swimming pool type reactors which emit a beautiful blue light.)
Which "foreign countries" did you have in mind? India (one country whose nuclear program I'm somewhat familiar with) has vast reserves of thorium and reasonable uranium deposits. BARC - Bhabha Atomic Research Center - has done a lot of work on thorium fast breeders, and I suspect India has large reserves of U-233. (Obviously the exact size of the U-233 stockpile is not generally known.)Unlimited growth == Cancer.
But how much nuclear physics do you need? All you need is this info: neutron bombardment will make thorium highly radioactive; there's quite a bit of Th in a lantern mantle; any alpha emitter mixed with beryllium makes a good neutron source; smoke detectors have a small amount of americium-241 which is an alpha emitter. Voila! Any kid who read Asimov's science books knows all this. Where the kid went a little astray is that a reactor - and a breeder even more so - is a huge engineering project, kind of like the difference between a Union Carbide plant and a high-school chem lab.
I feel if only the kid had one good teacher in school, he would have had no trouble passing any tests and be well on the way to becoming a good scientist. We (society) fucked up.
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
~~~blur screen and flash forward into ze pHuture~~~~~~
"Gramps, is it true that some kid...?"
"Why, yes, K-bob-Alpha3, not only is it true, I was there when the story was rescued from oblivion. If it hadn't been for slashdot..."
"Wow, the slashdot, Gramps? You knew the original slashdot?!"
"Well, I guess you could put it that way K-bob. I was one of the first billion non-anonymous cowards. ... Ya see, back then, we didn't have all this security circuitry embedded in our butto..."
"Uh,... ok, thanks Gramps, but we gotta go. You know, like, the flux-capacitor is, like, waiting?"
"Oh, oh, yes, I'm sorry. Here I am nattering on again about the kick-ass old days...never mind me...I'll be fine...you run along now!..."
"What a punk! No way a dumbass like gramps was one of the first billion slashdotters! No stinkin' way!"
~~~blur screen & return to menial cubicle job~~~~
SPaM: Seriously Persistent/Powerful Meme
Remember: dumb, unsolicited mass commercial email is only one subset of the true SPaM.
Where did the "A" go? I don't know; I didn't lose it! You find it!
Memeherds of the new electric prarie, throw down your keyboards and dance!
(Now if I could just find myself a good cyberdog...I'd have these pesky memes under control in no time!)
A meme a day keeps the brainrot at bay!
Ok, sorry, no more stupid meme babble. Schleeeep, I must schleeeeep!
____________________(
If people paid more (or any) attention to their kids, we'd have less problems like this. Amazing what a kid can do with a little ingenuity and a Jr Dr Evil lab kit.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I'm not sure where you are from, but around here 15 year old kids drive $30-40K cars to their jobs at fast food places and wear $100 sneakers, and sport a fortune in body piercings and tattoos. A homegrown nucelar reactor would be pocket change - of course most 15 years around here can't read but thats another story........
I'm not completeley saying this is a hose (although, it more than likely is) did anyone else try and follow the math of the story?
We start with 100 broken smoke detectors, at roughly $1 each... only $100 so far... Then, we tack on "Thousands of lantern mantles" which I will assume to be at least 2,000. I don't know how much that is in your neck of the woods, but here you would be hard pressed to find them for under $1, so tack on another $2,000. Finally, we get another "$1,000 in lithium batteries" to bring us up to $3,100. Finally, we have clocks appropriated from "junk-yards and antique shops" which don't give anything away (We all watched Sanford and Son, you know how it is). So, I'll be generous on that one and say he spent around $250 on clocks.
Long story even longer is that we now have $3,350. All from a 15 year old kid, which would have been restricted by the American Labor Laws to only work limited hours a day, and most certainly at minimum wage.
Again, I'm not saying this is a complete hose, but I find the story more than a little hard to believe (not to mention completing the project in an amount of time as not to destroy the previously prepaired components).
Duck tape is affectionatly known as hunnerd mile an hour tape in the truckin bid'ness
But hunnerd mile an hour tape don't mean nuttin ifin ya don't got no Bailin wire!!!!
10/4
Integrity is what you are when nobody is looking.
The kid will now be recruited to the point of blatant harassment by every college, university, and military institution in the world.
What's scary is that someday that kid will be a first-and-foremost problem.
Zaphod B
Zaphod B
When duplication is outlawed, only outlaws will have
Actually... it says in the article how he did it.
He told them he was working for a project for school.
How hard do you think it is?
"I am doing a project for school on how smoke detectors work, I want to take the plastic cover off and take a picture and label all of the parts, can you tell me how they work?"
SOmething like that is sure to yeild the info. Of course, I have opened a smoke detector, the amerecium is always in a small metal case that has markings on it saying "do not open" - not hard to figure out at all.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
However, according to the article he didn't use the radium directly. He used the Radium and berylium to create a neutron gun - after his americium and alluminum one proved too underpowered for his uses.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
This article was in Reader`s Digest *years* ago.
Maybe he just wants to be black?
Yes, once you've built your own atomic device, we at ACME Atomic Products promise no more being picked on!
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
Jesus...
Make affiliate bucks
It's not that uncommon a name. I have a friend named "Ingrid Hahn"....
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Ceci n'est pas une sig.
Gaffer's Tape uses the same adhesives as duct tape, but is different. First of all, Gaffers Tape leaves nowhere near as much residue as duct tape leaves. Secondly, Gaffer's tape has a dull surface, because the shiny surface of duct tape causes reflections, and is not good for Television.
-
But tritium has a half-life of *minutes*.
12.5 years, IIRC.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
No, no, no. It's not TV that's doing it -- it's those damned computer games and rap music that's doing it!
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
Yeah, I read about it in "Readers' Digest" almost 2 years ago. I had been looking for the story, but couldn't find it. Does anyone know which issue it was in?
Red Green likes building stuff out of duct tape. This is right up his alley.
You're using her as bait, Master!
AFAIK, both deuterium and tritium are naturally occouring isotopes of hydrogen and can be found in very small quantites of water.
David could have produced his own with that neutron gun of his, since duterium is hydrogen with a neutron and tritium is hydrogen with two neutrons.
All he had to do was bombard hydrogen gas with the gun. But then, how would he collect it?
That's simply for generating electricity, not propulsion, and the EE's at NASA can design some very efficient circuits, I'm sure. To actually move the probes takes some very reactive materials, hydrazine and such.
Further, in "Mars Direct" (I think that is what the book was called) the author talks about sending powerful reactors to Mars. He seems to know what he is talking about.
I mean, keep in mind that nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers are big, in part, because they need to be big! Likewise powerplants.
A turbine big enough to power a car would have to be pretty big as well. I'm not sure how it would work out if you used the reactor to simply generate electricity for an electric motor.
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
The harper's article claims the cleanup was "Golf Manor Superfund" yet the EPA has no listing of any cleanup by that name, they don't even have have a listing for any residential cleanup in Commerce, MI.
maru
It's odd, because the well-known "duct tape" cloth tape is not actually used for ductwork. Aluminum or vinyl tape is instead used for that.
maru
I said "there is no listing for any residential cleanup". I don't think "Venture Rim Products", with an incident description of "ABANDONED WAREHOUSE IN LIGHT INDUSTRIAL RESIDENTIAL AREA. NEAREST RESIDENCE IS APPROXIMATELY 1500 AWAY. ABOUT 280 DRUM S OF POLYURETHANE COMPONENTS LEFT ON SITE.ABANDONED WAREHOUSE IN LIGHT INDUSTRIAL RESIDENTIAL AREA. NEAREST RESIDENCE IS APPROXIMATELY 1500 AWAY. ABOUT 280 DRUMS OF POLYURETHANE COMPONENTS LEFT ON SITE." is the report that would correspond with the supposed "Golf Manor" incident.
maru
"David Hahn's early years were seemingly ordinary. The blond, gangly boy played baseball and soccer, and joined the Boy Scouts. His parents, Ken and Patty, had divorced, and David lived with his father and stepmother, Kathy, in nearby Clinton Township."
He lived in Clinton Twp. in his "early years," but the incident occured in Commerce Twp.You are the weakest linkgoodbye.
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Stupid people suck.
The article(s) say that he is in the navy reading up on "steroids, melanin, genetic codes, &c." Melanin is a pigment present in human eyes where it adsorbes UV radiation and in skin (to varying degrees) where it does about the same thing. Steroids are often used with patients suffering from degenerate skin disorders to restore growth. Adding to this mix his interest in "genetic codes," I can only conclude that he is working feverishly in his 2'x7'x3' bunk on board some navy ship to create a gene therapy that enhances his body's quantites of melanin to protect him from further radiation and of steroidal compounds that may repair whatever physical radiation burns he may have, in addition to repairing his radiation-hammered DNA to a less mutated state. Stagin' a comeback. More power to him.
-------------------------
Stupid people suck.
Yup. Also used on watch faces. The most expensive commercially available substance in the world. Last time I bothered checking, it was 10 grand American per gram. That was 10 or 15 years ago.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Golf Manor isn't a city. It's the name of a subidvision in Commerce Township, Michigan.
"I think so, Brain, but 'instant karma' always gets so lumpy." - Pinky
"Decepticons FOREVER!!!" - Ravage
Radioactive material can give off 3 types of rays. Alpha, beta, and gamma. Look up the details for Americium and you will find that it gives off alpha rays which are very very weak. You can probably stop them with a single sheet of newspaper.
How dangerous do you suppose something like Americium could be if smoke detectors are placed in every house and especially in childrens rooms. Also making nitro glycerine isn't that easy (or safe). One of the main ingrediants is nitric acid and you certainly can't go down to the corner drugstore and buy some.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
His approach sounded very cookbookish. All he probably had to do was plug-n-chug the equations.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Isn't Californium ($27 million per gram) more expensive? Only 8 grams made since it was discovered and its used in all kinds of applications.
i wholeheartedly agree. i proudly wear the DeCSS shirt and i don't care what anyone thinks. and on the topic of making bombs, i don't think that's all too funny. i got in big trouble in my freshman year of high school for dabbling with that stuff. allthough it did get me a lot of "respect" among my peers.
for (i = 0; i < ALL_CHICKS_I_KNOW; i++) { ask_out(); if (get_laid) break; }
What, me worry?
So, rather than debate the validity of this crap any further, could anyone explain the above interrogative statement to me?
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
The concept is simple... But it's just that... a concept. It took many many years of work of the U.S.'s greatest scientists (and imported ones) to build a working reactor. Am I supposed to take it at face that someone who can't even pass a state given math test was building a reactor? We've all seen such tests, and we all know that even the hardest of "state mandated" tests rarely go beyond second year high school algebra type things (logs, conics, etc.), and mostly stay in the realm of basic geometry. Even with this in mind, failing such tests would mean him lacking not only the knowledge for the more difficult part of the test but the easier parts too! Yet, he was able to understand nuclear chemistry topics? Sorry, not buying it.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
I also believe there was a show on Unsolved Mysteries about this kid. They had to call in the DoE to clean up the mess.
That's a troll if I ever did see one.
He read a 1970's artice of Electronic's Australia that discussed how to build a home made nuke and the problems you would enocounter. One thing it made clear was how dangerous it was and how in the end itis just finding the right bits. The most dangerous part is smeltering the Uranium into 10lb hemispheres as Uranium does not like bening melted. It gives of fumes and likely to catch fire, or react.
Now, if I remember rigt, it proposed a underground cellar filled with concrete, one hemisphere at the bottom of a shaft, the other at the top if the same shaft. A small explosive forces the sphere's together, which provides the now critical mass and if you've got everything right, a yeild of 25 kilotons.
The point of the article was to show that yes, it is possible. But also the risks as well. You need not to understand the maths, just be careful understand what your doing.
I think the article is in a cira 1979 Electronic Australia. Thence, although I doubt this story is more thanan urban legend, it is still quite possible to build a home nuke if your detirmined enough. Suitcase nukes are definantly not possible.
"Old Rallydrivers never die - they just fail to book in on time"
So let me get this straight. I can find all the information I need to build a nuclear reactor, written at a level a 15 year old boy scout can understand, and that's "OK". But DeCSS is BAD. We can't have that kind of dangerous code out there! We might copy movies.
So once again: Irradiating 40,000 people is OK. Fair Use copies of DVDs are bad.
And we wonder why the world thinks America is fucking nuts.
Did he ever get his scouting merit badge for his pains?
...does anyone else find it just slightly strange that his name is DAVID HAHN!??
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
--
--
fat lenny's gonna lick your brain today.
I read this article a few years back in Reader's Digest. I haven't gotten around to reading the article this one's about, but from what i remember, the kid had earlier proven himself as a scientific genius by making nitro-glycerine at the age of 12 by modifying an old chemistry set. it appears that the way he created the nuclear reactor was that he went to a firehouse on a day when they were discarding old smoke detectors. he already knew that Americium was contained in smoke detectors and that it could be used to create the nuclear reactor. He simply stole a whole bunch of smoke detectors and extracted the element.
-"Hey, Baby. It's not a rash, it's textured love."
Albert Eistein failed math in greade school as well. This is the truth, feel free to check for verification online.
Keep that in mind when next time you dismiss someone as unintelligent because they can't pass a state written test.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
I tried French once. I didn't like it (or did it not like me?).
I wrote the previous-previous comment, so I can be certain that English is my mother tongue. I figured some relentless moderator would mod me offtopic for fixing that mistake in my post. Guess it never did happen.
[Note to slashdot: How about a -1 score button for little things like that?]
But hey, thanks for the support (I think! 8-)
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
You might be right, but I recalled that little tidbit from an older biography of Albert Einstein I once read. Perhaps it was wrong, or my memory is faulty. Sorry.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Once you've got the reactor, why would you want to mess things up by adding a steam turbine? Just power the truck with the steam! Steam is a great power source, and was used for the first automobiles, until the explosive properties of refined petroleum could be exploited. Most of the water is NOT anywhere near the radioctive bits, it runs through a heat exchanger. No, the radioactive bits can be pretty small and well-contained. Lots of universities have little reactors.
Still does turn out to be a pretty heavy unit, though, and even your fat ass isn't masive enough to justify that kind of power. Now, heavy rail, on the other hand...
A modern nuke-powered train could be practical, with a little work.
You're still making electricity. I was thinking steam.
The BOY SCOUTS of AMERICA, in addition to being the largest HATE GROUP in the country, is now an organized militia, complete with NUCLEAR WEAPONS.
Why does the BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA, the world's largest HATE GROUP, get special treatment? (Not to mention special access to our public schools--unheard of for a religous organization--hundreds of square miles of public land, and a congressional charter?
You overestimate the amount of mateial needed for criticallity. All you really need is a neutron source, fissile material and the proper geometry. When I was in Naval Nuclear Power School we studied some of the accidents which had occurred. My favorite was the janitor at the enrichment plant who used a wet mop to clean up a spill of what I think was uranium hexafloride. He noticed that his mop head got hot and emitted some steam and he didn't feel right. He died within the week. What got him was the water which acted as a moderator for the fast neutrons emitted by the uranium slowing them down to thermal energies. The U-235 enriched uranium hexaflouride was fissile and the geometry of the twisted mop head was sufficient to attain criticallity for a brief period of time. No explosion in this case just some heat and a sheet of hard radiation. Nuclear things that go boom do so because of obtaining super criticallity.
During WW 2 it was spelled Duck tape. Cause it was water proof or something. Then after the war it was discovered to be handy for taping "ducts" hence the change. Although these days I don't think it is used for ducts.
Is is paranoia or is it a crazy coincidence that the police happened to be investigating stolen property where someone has a miniature reactor?
I believe I read this at some point in Reader's Digest also.
Duct tape is for Ducts, and quite versitle.
Duck Tape is tape Ace sells and it's a poor imitation of the real Duct Tape.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
...I don't think any 'norm' has to worry about the majority of us /. geeks reproducing.
8)
Concrete analysis...
It sounds to me like he didn't figure it out, but he got all the information from his helper-person, who simply said "mix a with b and you'll get c." Since he wasn't a nucular math genious, he didn't know how much c there would be with the amounts of a and b he supplied. I think the only thing he was clever about was that he figured out how to get all the materials he needed, which still was most likely around $200-300.
At the University of Chicago, we have a yearly event called ScavHunt, a huge competition that is part scavanger hunt for the obscure and ridiculous and part geeky Junk Yard Wars. Anyway, a couple of years ago an item on the list was a functional breeder reactor. Supposedly such an item was constructed and did function, using an Americium source and Thorium from a lantern mantle. I guess it was safer though, as I don't think the EPA or NRC was onsite for cleanup.
Oh, and Team Snell-Hitchcock won the competition again this year. We even made a SCSI controlled vibrator ;)
The reporter who wrote this was totally ignorant of matters nuclear. Radium is an alpha emitter, totally useless for a breeder experiment. He was grabbing for buzzwords.
I'm not sure that many pounds of thorium are needed for a thorium breeder, but it may well be in the hundred of pounds, perhaps in the tons range. The kid is supposed to have been able to refine some unidentified compound to obtain huge quantities of thorium?
The story should have triggered the bullshit alarms and never been posted to /.
...or so I've heard. Anyway, I got the impression that he failed in school not because he lacked ability, but because (like Einstein) he lacked interest. I'd also like to make the point that his brand of "toolshed chemistry" probably requires little, if any, math.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
You mean 10 lbs! Don't try to make 2 55-lb chunks of weapons-grade U-235, as each will produce a huge uncontrolled reaction. Double boom.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
So, I wouldn't lose much sleep worrying about fusion hobbyists destroying cities. The US government throws hundreds of millions of dollars at the problem, and they have barely reached the point where they get out as much energy as it costs to make the fusion happen.
Anyway, great article. I really hope the guy can find some venue in which his amazing potential can be realized.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
In the UK, the cloth-based stuff is called Gaffer tape (sometimes spelt "Gaffa"). The nylon-vinyl stuff is sometimes called duct tape, but mostly it's called gaffer tape.
So called after the term for a theatre or TV lighting electrician, who use the stuff for sticking cables down.
It can last for 3,000 miles as a temporary repair on a Volvo radiator hose...
Actually, you are quite wrong, because the type of nuclear reactor he made was a subcritical reactor. A subcritical reactor does not need to be of critical mass in order to produce fission. Instead, it relies on the nuclear particles already being emmited from radioactive materials to sustain a low-level rate of fission.
Fission does not require alot of energy at all. In fact, if you understand nuclear physics, you know that the macroscopic cross section for absorbtion in a thermal (low-energy) neutron is much higher than that of a fast (high-energy) neutron.
Many colleges have subcritical reactors. You may want to read up on the concept.
I have seen some brewing equipment on some back yards - next morning you thinking that the liquid was actualy radioactive. I guess this is the case in this story. I know - it is Saturday, but it is not an excuse for drinking too much before posting.
There was a movie that I saw one day on Fox, that was based on a true story, and had a simliar storyline. And as I recall, the kids name was david! The movie had the ducttape and all, but they avoided showing how to make radioactive stuff, by just stealign it from a processing lab for nuclear materials. The movie to me was pretty fake, but I thought it was good. It's intresting to finally read the story that goes along with it!
Am I the only one that wonders where he got fissionable material from? It's not like you can pull the stuff out of smoke detectors.
Paul Anderson
"I drank WHAT?!" -- Socrates
Golf Manor is the name of the subdivision, not the city. Commerce Township, MI is all over Google.
Course, I'm still not convinced this is for real.
Shaun
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
David Hahn is now in the Navy, where he reads about steroids, melanin, genetic codes, prototype reactors, amino acids and criminal law. "I wanted to make a scratch in life," he explains now. "I've still got time." Of his exposure to radioactivity he says, "I don't believe I took more than five years off my life."
The second article goes into a bit more detail about it on page 14. Hope this helps.
Cheers!
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
These cops weren't the sharpest tacks, were they?
I guess they haven't seen pictures of the first atomic bomb. It was a *bit* larger than a toolbox.
Miniaturization technology is still one of the most highly guarded secrets surrounding nuclear weapons.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Sorry. That's +5 Funny.
I don't doubt that some kid was accumulating some small amounts radioactive stuff, and they sent in the EPA to clean it all up, but this kid was supposed to have been sending out "20 letters a day" to the director of the NRC, and engaging him in scientific discourse, even though he couldn't pass the High School writing tests to graduate.
Read the whole Harper's article to see how absurd it all is.
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I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
For one, he couldn't spell or write well enough to pass the tests to graduate high school (as stated early in the article), and yet he:
Uh, Yeah, Right.
-
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Wow, this is the first thing on slashdot that I have really wanted to respond to. I think this kid (LOL, he is my age) should really be given more attention. At his age I would not have gone to the lengths that he did, I would have given up when I found out that I could not easily get any of the components...I'm just too lazy :)
Someone, give this guy a lab and some money!
There was a very long story about this kid in Harper's magazine. It was a very intersting narrative about science, technology, soceity, and a very bright student caught between a divorce.
A very interesting read. I'm not sure which issue it was though. Definitely in the 1999 or 2000 series.
Don't forget DHMO and cheese.
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110 Lbs of weapons-grade U235. In two pieces, of course. Cram those two pieces together so hard that they fuse, and...
boom.
Come on... if Tom Clancy can put enough information into his fiction so that the DoD comes and pays him a visist to ask him where he got his info (FOIA strikes again!), then it entirely possible to get all the information to build a nuclear device.
Hell's bells, most of the information was in one college textbook I had. It's not the information that is the hard part. It's the acquiring of fissionable materials (enough to do the job), machining the explosives (a real bitch, given the tolerances you are held to), and getting the people who can do the job. Refining plutonium is not the easiest thing in the world, either.
Again, it's not the info that's hard. Most of it can be gotten for less then $200 by buying the correct textbooks. It's acquiring all the parts that is a bitch.
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
David Hahn set us up the bomb!
-----
Even if the kid is brilliant, explain why he failed the state math test. Anyone who is capable of understanding nuclear physics, much less actually building a breeder reactor, is pretty advanced in math, pretty far past calculus. I'm pretty iffy about this one.
This seems to be fiction invented by a writer who is well-educated in nuclear physics, and who is depending on the fact that his readers aren't.
For example, this paragraph from the story cannot be right:
"It was slow going until one day, driving through Clinton Township to visit his girlfriend, Heather, he noticed that his Geiger counter went wild as he passed Gloria's Resale Boutique/Antique. The proprietor, Gloria Genette, still recalls the day when she was called at home by a store employee who said that a polite young man was anxious to buy an old table clock with a tinted green dial but wondered if she'd come down in price."
This doesn't make sense. Geiger counters are not very sensitive because they depend on the ability of an energetic particle or photon to ionize gas molecules. This takes a lot of energy.
To detect the radiation on the street using a geiger counter, the radiation near where the source was stored would have to be so intense that the workers in the store would become sick.
Read message #173 above, by Kierthos (Kierthos@aol.com):
"And as I recall, the radioactive particles emitted by Uranium are alpha (okay, it's been a long time, so I'm guessing), which can be stopped by a stout pair of pants."
That's true. Beta radiation (fast electrons) doesn't travel far either. Another kind of radiation emitted by radioactive substances is gamma rays. Gamma rays are photons more energetic than X-rays. Gamma rays can penetrate easily. However, consider that the article quote implies that the distance over which the radiation was detected was from inside the store to the street. I'm guessing that would be at least 6 meters, or 20 feet.
Gamma radiation from a radioactive substance is omni-directional. The energy radiates the same way in all directions. As radiation spreads into a volume, its intensity is divided proportional to the square of the distance. This means that someone working in the store would be exposed to a far higher intensity of radiation than would be detectable in the street.
Also, the amount of radium (radioactive material) in luminous clock dials was extremely small. Radium was, and is, extremely expensive, so there never would have been very much in one place. Radium-226, the most common isotope, decays to half its original intensity in 1600 years. So there would never have been a reason to include an extra sample of radium with a clock.
Conclusion: This story is, at least partly, a hoax.
Bush's education improvements were
Now, with the internet, a 15 year old can probably design one themselves.
Oh great! Nuclear-armed script-kiddies...
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
fwiw, this was basicly done on an episode of "barney miller" twenty-some years ago.
Well, for a while, anyway.
[Caller] Er, I need some help with your smoke alarms...
[Support tech ID ten-t] Is the battery connected?
[Caller] No, that's not the problem at all. You see, I can't seem to find the radioactive part...
[ID ten-t] No problem, let me just transfer you to our "radioactive component location" department. One moment, please...
I mean, this kid doesn't even come across as that smart. I don't know about you, but my many foolhardy stunts of youth did not involve blowing up my own house or filling my mom's potting shed with radioactive isotopes, much less putting the stuff in my pants pocket. Maybe he just wants seven-legged children some day. What really suprises me is that this dodo apparently pulled off acts of social engineering that would make Captian Crunch proud. Maybe the rest of us are the idiots.
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
Yes, but its a little more complicated then that. As someone mentioned, you need to smash together two semi-spheres of U-235 or Pl-239 to get a sustainted nuclear reaction (aka bomb).
Now, for him to have kept refining materials WHICH WERE HARD TO GET into 110lb of ultra-pure uranium or plutorium would have taken forever! The US government carefully monitors the movement of radioactive materials, at least in large quantities. For someone to buy enough pitchblend to do that would not go unnoticed. Marie Curie spent years refining tonnes of pitchblend in a school-house shed to do the same thing. She wound up with a little but of radium. Thats why Foreign countries can't do it easily: because of lack of availability of materials.
Also, if terrorists attacked US interests with nuclear weapons, your government (i'm canadian and don't support USicans) would go after them with everything they had, probably ignoring international treaties and boundaries in persuit of a public hanging.
-MR
-Michael Roy Some people are like Slinkies. Not really useful, but you can't help smiling when you see one tumble down
Jesus Christ, this story is OLDER THAN FREAKING SLASHDOT. NEWS?
All your base are belong to XO
http://mi-net.dynup.net/
http://blackmagik.dynup.net/
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
This story was in Reader's Digest a few years ago, January '97 or '98 I believe. If I remember right he is now a student at the U.S. Naval Academy
There are some things in this article that are kind of strange to me. First, the article says the shed was"contaminated at up to 1000 times the normal levels of background radiation".
Here is why the reporter doesn't know what the hell he was talking about. Radiation and Contamination are two different things. You can have Background Radiation but there is no such thing as Background Contamination You can have enough contamination to cause background contamination.
Also, assuming he slipped up and meant "radioactive levels at up to 1000 times the normal levels of background radiation". Still, this is not much. There is no way that he could have received a lifetime full of dosage from something that gave off 1000 times the normal background level of radiation. (another slashdotter proclaimed this).
Also, a Geiger counter (no longer used anymore except by patchouli soaked anti-nukers) is used to detect REALLY HIGH levels of radioactivity. Showing radioativity on a Geiger counter is BAD. It's range is from 1 R to 100 R per hour. If he was in a 1R field for a few months, he be seriousely screwed. Since there is no way to detect 1000X backgraound radiation on a Geiger counter (because it is too small of am amount for a Geiger counter) his counter would always show zero. Also, a Geiger counter is for detecting Gamma radiation. How he figured out there was neutron radiation coming from the radioactive device is beyond me.
In other words, don't be scammed by all of the Geiger counters on eBay, it will always stay at zero. Buy an Eberline RM-14 or E-520 (if you can find one).
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The story is a dupe, the topic is boring, the facts weren't checked. WE GET IT!!
From the way it was written, and the fact that an event such as this would have over shadowed even the OJ Simpson trial but didn't all point to a parody, or joke. Certainly a simple Freedom of Information Act request would root out the truth. But it's seems to blatenly false, it would be a shame to waste the time an money. A little girl falls down a well, and everyone drops what they're doing for a week, but a kid who can't drive builds a breeder reactor and no one notices. Naw. The idea that people just believe anything they read, because someone wrote it, is pretty ammusing though. Such is life.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
The FOIA would be to determine the validity of the incident, ie EPA showing up and what not. The information is all but common knowledge. This is, in my view, an Urban Ledgend. To think that there are people who are not even sceptical of such a story is, to my sensabilities, obscene. I wouldn't bother with fisson weapons. Just between you and me, when I "flip out", I'm going to use devices of my own design, break in to the National Accelerator Lab, and trigger a spontanious phase transition of the vacuum (which would destroy the universe). How's that for a diabolical plan?
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
If only the Algerians could have recruited a 15 year old boy scout, they wouldn't have needed to bring the explosives with them. What I would give to see the look on Osama Bin Ladin's face.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
I don't know about any of you, but I have loads of chemicals sitting around. I always wondered why it glows green sometimes. Maybe I can apply this?
Winter 2010: With Glowing Hearts
And if I remember the study on tape adhesives, duct tape failed badly compared to the average masking tape (duct tape doesn't stand up well when subjected to the high temperatures of a furnace's air flow). The biggest problem is in the level of stickyness on the adhesive is much lower than it should be. No insult on Red Green's comedy staple, but duct tape is probably best used for taping ducks.
t ape-HVAC.html
http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/duct-
Can Duct Tape Take the Heat?
http://hem.dis.anl.gov/eehem/98/980710.html
"Face it, a nation that maintains a 72% approval rating on George W. Bush is a nation with a very loose grip on reality.
..and I can verify that this did, in fact, happen.I do remember it making headlines. In fact, it is still talked about in some of the local high school science classes (although not reapeated), thank goodness.
Wow I no longer need my UPS.. I can just build one of these and keep my server going forever!!
Then he threw everything he had (Americium, Radium, Uranium powder) into a ball of foil. Yeah, it would never have made a reactor, but he didn't pull all of his material out of smoke detectors.
to makes maters most confusing the only thing that duct tape is not good at is taping duct's. this is becouse the heet and the mousture destroys int adhesiveness
hack the planet
Google hasn't heard about it.
Oh, and that kid too.
karma capped
There is no way that the radioactive materiasl that this student put together could ever have created a sustained nuclear reaction. I read this article very carefully when it came out, and came to the conclusion that a gullible reporter was taken in. Sure, one can obtain some moderately radioactive materials, but that is one hellofa long way from fission. Don't believe everything you read. See http://www.umsl.edu/~chemist/books/halspicks/hal19 98.html#October
The time has come when everyone can afford a simple energy source. Build now and get radiation poisoning free!
It would work if you also used about a gallon of lubricant. Unless you want to start a fire, of course.
Proof once again, that duct-tape has over a million uses. Just avoid using as a condom.
Neither the NRC nor the EPA show any record of Golf Manor (the city in which this supposedly occurred), nor of David Hahn. (There is a David Hahn-Baker listed as a member of an advisory board.)
Plutonium is controlled but how long will it be before someone hacks together enough little lasers to trigger hydrogen fusion via kinetic implosion a.k.a. a H-bomb? That would reduce property values in that part of the city.
The relentless march of progress is making all the great new tech cheaper and cheaper. The business cycle means that old tech gets turfed faster. Dumpster diving can bring you a funtional genetics lab. Genetics used to be breeding differnt coloured flowers or cats or dogs. Soon "The Chicken Heart that Ate Chicago" could be a reality.
Could this be why SETI has yet to pick up a signal?
From: http://www.pafko.com/history/h_time.html
Also, an account of the first reactor.
The story... Chicago, at University of Chicago, a group of students creates a nuclear reactor on the football field. The first uncontrolled nuclear reaction ever (1942)...had to be stopped by a guy running up with an ax.
:)
The first nuclear reactor. Oddly, it looks like a toolshed.
History likes repeating itself.
Here is a look at the early Chicago reactors.
Not only is this article completely true but did you know the FCC i strying to put a tax on modems again??! Not only that but if you get an email that says "Open Me Now" it will destroy your hard drive if you read it?
I saw this stupid joke on the internet several years ago something called "how to make an atomic bomd out of household materials". It was supposed to be a parody of an Amateur Scientist article in SciAm. And now some joker sold it to Reader's digest??? I hope they paid him a lot - he deserves it?
----- In Your Cubicle No One Can Hear You Scream...
1- probably not your typical boy scout
2- apples, oranges
3- the intersection of the set of speech items and the set of devices is a non-empty set which contains DeCSS, but not the contents of a nuclear physics textbook
--
I am not a nuclear expert, but many space vehicles have had nuclear reactors in them which must have been small and not very massive.
Further, in "Mars Direct" (I think that is what the book was called) the author talks about sending powerful reactors to Mars. He seems to know what he is talking about. So, I think you might be mistaken about the size and weight of a functional powerplant.
I mean, keep in mind that nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers are big, in part, because they need to be big! Likewise powerplants.
I am not contesting your other points, however.
Also, the OP was probably trolling.
MM
By including this sig, the copyright holders of this work or collection unreservedly place it in the public domain.
Unfortunately, most people confuse radiation with RADIATION!!!! Alpha emitters are only dangerous if ingested, and trying to transmute elements, while interesting is not backyard stuff (even with the philosopher's stone). After reading the article, I'd file it under Legend, Urban. (See alt,folklore.urban, AKA AFU).
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
-- MarkusQ
I thought that I had done something really remarkable when I made TNT in my high school's anatomy/chemistry lab.
-You can cry, but you'll still die. There'll be no tears in the end.
We now return to our regularly scheduled drivel.
--
--
Mmm... delicious white marbles...
This is such incredibly old news. The story was in Reader's Digest (?) a few years back. I personally know this guy. We served aboard CVN-65 USS Enterprise together. I was nuke mechanic, this guy worked in Air Department (as an ILARTZ/LENS tech that's the carrier's landing lights that the pilots call "the ball") w/ my best friend. The guy is a complete fuck up. He's a racist and a drug addict (and was part of one of the largest drug rings in US Naval history) as well as being prone to stealing government property and selling it. He was such a fuck up that they booted his ass down to Deck Dept with all the Bosuns. Complete waste of perfectly good genetic material.
*Shakes head* And I thought -I- did crazy sh** when I was a kid... Doesn't this disturb anyone? Could someone /actually/ make an atomic weapon using methods like these?
---------
"Look. Endsville is burning." -Mamimi, FLCL
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Damn, having never seen the name of this particular adesive product in written form I assumed it to be spelt "Duck Tape" and was designed for securing ducks whilst performing acts which would normally cause them to attempt rapid escape.
Boy do I feel stupid.
I remember, back in the day when my mother worked in a nuclear power plant, every once in a while, she would lose a pair of pants or whatever, because they got 'contaminated', just the thought of this kid, and his rudimentary methods makes me glad I live nowhere near there.
It's a lot easier to just take a small quantity of plutonium or uranium (one of the more radioactive isotopes, of course), strap it on to a convention explosive (fertilizer, nitroglycerin, even gunpowder could do) and make it go boom. You now have some very nasty stuff spread over a wide area, and spreading wider. You also can have a reasonable initial boom, depending on how much conventional explosive you use.
The advantage of this method is that you don't need as much restricted material as for a true nuke, and it requires much less skill. Unlike with a true atomic bomb, you don't need to build the bomb all that precisely, as long as you wire the fuses or whatever properly. I forget whether I read this on Slashdot or NewScientist, sorry.
I'm the stranger...posting to
"Just avoid using as a condom"
If you were very careful, and used some sort of rubbing alchohol or acetone to remove the tape, this might work. The problem is that by the time you pay for the tape and the nail polish remover, it's probably cheaper and easier just to buy a condom.
I'm the stranger...posting to
I have a question. Since atomic weapons are a sorce of considerable potential military power, and power is an aphrodisiac, can I become more attractive to women by building a nuclear device? If so, how powerful does the device have to be to gain the maximum amount of increased sexiness? Is there a constant in the factor of increased sexiness per kiloton, or is it a variable dependent on other factors? Finally, are pure fission weapons old enough technology that the increase in sexiness they provide is negligable?
I'm the stranger...posting to
You should reallly just use the reactor to send power through the rail lines, instead of a reactor on each train. Cheaper/safer.
I'm the stranger...posting to
First of all, what the heck would you do if the car got totalled? You'd contaminate dozens of miles of the Interstate, and even if you survived, you'd die an agonizing death from radiation poisoning or cancer.
There are other problems as well. For example, do you intend to power your car just with the energy generated from radioactive decay? If so, I hate to break it to you, but there's not a whole lot to use. It's doubtful that you could use that power to move a car, expecially the large one you would need.
In fact, the only way you could do this would be if you converted an 18-wheeler with trailer. Put a true fission reactor in the trailer, complete with boilers and cooling system, and run wires from the trailer to the truck itself, where you would have a large electric motor. Sinmply converting an old jalopy as a "tinkering project" would not work. Not to mention, for this nuclear-powered 18-wheeler, you'd need a commercial driver's licence.
Of course, the fact that you'd essentiall have a whole 18-wheeler trailer filled with radioactive metals and contaminated water means a couple things. First, you would have to have thick lead wall all over the thing - how a top speed of 30mph sound. The fact you'd have a huge amount of power is irrelevent - the other problems involved with moving that much mass at that much speed (brakes, transmission, etc) are formidable. And frankly, I wouldn't want you driving fast in this behemoth anyway.
Remember what I said about your entire trailer being filled with radioactive-contaminated water? Let me ask you this: How often does your car radiator spring a leak? Not often, true, but it has happened to you, hasn't it? In a nuclear power plant, there are hundreds of people checking every valve and in constant control. Your reactor will have one controller - yourself -and you will be driving while trying to control the reactor.
If you want a bad$%# truck, get a SmarTruck with missile launchers and whatnot.
I'm the stranger...posting to
While you can't do everything on a budget, you generally don't need a lot of equipment in order to do science, even cutting edge science. Policymakers should remember that when they consider trying to restrict the availability of technology or bet that it won't proliferate. You may be able to track and restrict nuclear materials, with occasional problems, but you can't restrict biotech or computers.
The situation is really not unlike software. You may have big companies going out and spending billions on "enterprise software", while nimble smaller players do a better job with open source.
interesting article....although i am "slightly" pessimistic that this didn't happen exactly as stated in the article
-OR_BraveHeart "there's nothing certain in life except death and taxes"
"Publicly, the men in white promised the residents of Golf Manor that they had nothing to fear, and to this day neither Pease nor any of the dozen or so people I interviewed knows the real reason that the Environmental Protection Agency briefly invaded their neighborhood. When asked, most mumble something about a chemical spill. The truth is far more bizarre: the Golf Manor Superfund cleanup was provoked by the boy next door, David Hahn, who attempted to build a nuclear breeder reactor in his mother's potting shed as part of a Boy Scout merit-badge project." So a quick search of the national Superfund cleanup list http://www.epa.gov/superfund/sites/query/basic.htm
Turns up three radioactive Superfund sites in Michigan. None of which are in Golf Manor.
Of course it could be a cover up.
Don't belive everything you read, but for gods sake belive some of it.
- SR
Although some of the details MAY have been exaggerated in the story, I can truthfully say that I live about 40 minutes away from Commerce Township, MI, and there IS a subdivision called Golf Manor. My band plays out in that area (cities surrounding Commerce Twp.) all the time, and I have several friends who live out there. I sent a link to this article to a few of them, and they all replied back to me saying that they remember when it happened, and was in the news. Golf Manor is right next to the middle school that one of my friends attended. So, I'm not saying that some of the "facts" in this article may be exaggerated or outright false, but there WAS an incident involving highly radioactive materials, a teenaged boy, and a shed in Commerce Township, MI. Since Golf Manor is simply the name of the subdivision, it's not going to show up in a mapping program or a list of US Cities.