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Alaskan Cyclotron - Not in My Backyard!
j-beda writes "Wired reports that "Albert Swank Jr., a 55-year-old civil engineer in Anchorage, Alaska, is a man with a mission. He wants to install a nuclear particle accelerator in his home." To be used to create medically useful isotopes, and even though some of the neighbours are supportive, opponents "compared potential damage from a cyclotron mishap to the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor accident" though an expert says "Probably the worst thing that could happen with small cyclotrons is that the operator might electrocute themselves." It looks like the Anchorage Assembly plans to hold an public hearing on December 20 to determine whether Swank will be permitted to install the device."
Local lawmakers rushed to introduce emergency legislation banning the use of cyclotrons in home businesses. State health officials took similar steps, and have suspended Swank's permit to operate cyclotrons on his property.
This the same lawmakers who wanted a A bridge to nowhere costing $941 Million?
the sig
This is just people being stupid. Also the reason they dropped 'Nuclear' from NMRI.
How do I get one installed in MY home? While it doesnt have the style points of being able to say "You do realise each one of us has an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on our backs?", it certainly would be a conversation peice ;-)
Plenty of people do stupid shit in their garden sheds, thats what they are there for!
:)
I have read about a kid building a reactor from smoke detectors, and the NZ guy who built his own cruise missile.
I sense a business opportunity for lead lined garden housing
Also, didn't Young Einstein manage to split the beer atom in his? (and with a hammer and chisel if I remember rightly)
liqbase
While obviously a cyclotron can't compare to a commercial nuclear power plant, I wouldn't want my neighbor building one. Aside from self-electrocution, they can release high energy photons which could reach other people, if improperly shielded. There is also the issue with any radioactive waste he may produce. The risk may be miniscule, but people generally shy away from non-controllable risks. While the guy is a civil-engineer, TFA doesn't say whether he has training or experience in nuclear technology or health physics either.
That said, I think it would be awesome to have a back-yard cyclotron. Imagine all the cool things you could do, activate pennies, evil radioactive monsters, become THE HULK, etc.
in the article they quote an expert from fermilab. incidentally i grew up less than 5 miles from there and all i have to show from it is this third eye and multiple superfluous nipples. one of my neighbors was affected to the extent that he can set things on fire by only using his mind... why did i have to get the shaft when it comes to deformities/mutations caused by cyclotrons? WHY GOD WHY?!?!?
But you're right: I wouldn't worry too much about the nuclear splitting capabilities either. Adequate lead shielding will protect the neighbors just fine.
John
Dr Ray Stantz: You know, it just occurred to me that we really haven't had a successful test of this equipment.
Dr. Egon Spengler: I blame myself.
Dr. Peter Venkman: So do I.
Dr Ray Stantz: Well, no sense in worrying about it now.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Why worry? Each one of us is carrying an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on his back.
These things are not toys. They make prompt and residual radiation. It's made to transmute elements into radioactive forms. Concern is not unreasonable.
.max
Again: this machine will be used to make radioisotopes. Short half lives or not, the proximal homowners have a legitamite reason to be concerned about a radioisotope factory next to their homes. What about contamination issues?
2: It is reasonable to have some concern about shielding. Anything energetic enough to make radionuclides can also make X-rays by the assload. Given that we're talking nuclear transmutation, a concern about neutron radiation (fairly long ranged and not stopped by standard rad shielding).
ASS-U-Ming the installation will be industry standard, there shouldn't be a problem. If this guy doesn't know what he's doing, he could cause problems. Given that nobody seems to know what his specific shielding and radcon/exposure control plan is... he screwed up by not getting preapproved in advance.
FWIW, i have run a re-tasked SDI helium-3 RFQ PET accelerator, and currently run the Tevatron, have manufactured antiprotons for the last 7 years send the Giant NuMI Neutrino beam from Fermilab to Minnesota, so i have a clue.
Let us rise above our usu. cynical smirking condescencion and allow as how the loi polloi have a legit concern in this instance.
It's all about risk.
What risk? Oh, wait, you mean the risk that the crackpots that the "opposition" digs up saying that a cyclotron could blow all of alaska to kingdom come could actually be right?
Look, I know people talk about bias and shit, and how everyone should listen to "both sides" of every argument, but didn't it occur to you that sometimes the other side is just plain wrong?
There's nothing legitimate about an obsession with "property values". Nobody has a right for their property to maintain a certain value. If land speculation is a critical part of your retirement plan, you might want to consider some less risky investments.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
At least this fella can stick a sign out the front... "Gone Fission"....
I'll show myself out.
Farnsworth: "So what are you doing to protect my constitutional right to bear doomsday devices?"
NRA Guy: "Well, first off, we're gonna get rid of that three day waiting period for mad scientists."
Farnsworth: "Damn straight! Today the mad scientist can't get a doomsday device, tomorrow it's the mad grad student! Where will it end?!"
NRA Guy: "Amen, brother. I don't go anywhere without my mutated anthrax. For duck huntin'."
This story made me think of this. Am I the only one?
Flash is the Herpes of the Internet.
your.opinion >
Just like how irradiated food succeeded so brilliantly even though it is safe? Most people hear the word radiation or nuclear and that's it for them, logic never comes into play.
Look folks, the amount of material produced would be very, very small - on the order of micro or pico curies of the DIAGNOSTIC isotope of fluorine - that has a 6 hour half-life!
Iodine 131 is another reagent common in treating thyroid cancers...
Molybdenum has an isotope with a half-life measured in seconds! Used in scintillation scans of soft tumors. Molybdenum has six stable isotopes and almost two dozen radioisotopes, the vast majority of which have half-lives measured in seconds. Mo-99 is used in sorpation generators to create Tc-99 for the medical nuclear isotope industry.
Finally, the cyclotron is not radioactive - it bombards the target element to create an isotope that is radioactive. I'd live next door to one - even in Anchorage (spent last August in that city) with the extrodinary earthquake & tsunamai risk - because the cyclotron could only release the very small amount of material that it was bombarding at the time of a catastrophic failure.
Also, have any of you folks noticed that AK is 5 time zones removed from the East Coast? You simply can't ship these short-lived isotopes.
Many hospitals have cyclotrons for that very reason! Others have manufacturers in the same city. Not the case in AK.
What's the problem? He installs a helipad without getting approval, you install an anti-aircraft battery without getting approval. These things have a way of sorting themselves out.
49.9 % of the population has below average inteligence
watch "the money masters" on google video
Three Mile Island was nearly catastrophic.
It certainly wasn't good, and it definitely underscored the need for more modern designs in nuclear power plants. However, the plant *did* shut down like it was designed to do. And even if it hadn't, we still wouldn't have had another Chernobyl on our hands. Chernobyl was a poor design that was intentionally compromised for "testing". A very bad situation indeed.
The TMI design was sufficiently different that the materials wouldn't have been able to spread in the way that Chernobyl did. (And Chernobyl has been somewhat overstated, mind you.)
And radiation did leave the plant during the accident.
It's not the radiation you need to worry about. Radiation falls off according to the inverse square law. Unless you were standing next to the plant itself, you weren't in much danger. The *real* problem is the radioisotopes. If they escape the plant (which is what happened in Chernobyl's rather spectacular boiler explosion) they will make their way into the food and water supplies, and - by extension - into our bodies. Those radioisotopes would then proceed to give you cancer from the inside out.
I was a young child then, and I still remember the terror of living within the evacuation area. Nobody knew when they would need to jump in the car and leave their homes behind.
Which is the sad part about the lack of public education on everything nuclear. The plant was not a "bomb" waiting to destroy your neighborhood. Had TMI gone through a spectacular failure, you would have been able to evacuate without too much difficulty. The local resources would have been contaminated, but otherwise you would have been reasonably safe.
Keep in mind that the dozen or so people who died in Chernobyl were people at the plant. All other deaths (which have been greatly exaggerated by the media, mind you) were from radioisotope contamination. Thankfully, most everyone who experienced Thyriod problems were treated. (An impressive feat given the status of the Soviet government at that point.)
Don't get wrong. Nuclear technology can be a scary thing, and people DID die in Chernobyl. Had something worse happened, people might have died from TMI as well. But the amount of FUD surrounding these two incidents has caused massive (perhaps irreparable) damage to the development of safer technologies for controling nuclear power. Technologies, mind you, that could be useful in the next generation of power production. Even Fusion performed without proper safeguards is a very dangerous practice.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I was a Nuclear Power Technician in the US Navy. The week I arrived in Idaho for prototype training at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, scientists and nuclear engineers arrived from around the world to recreate TMI. INEL has about 200 nuclear reactors of all sizes and ages. They were all built for research purposes. They had one that they felt was similiar enough to the TMI reactor for their purposes. They recreated the conditions of TMI and let the reactor go to see just how bad it could have gotten. The result? As predicted, the nuclear reaction stopped when all the water was gone, there was some core damage due to residual heat. But that was it. No catastrophic melt down. No failure of the primary reactor vessel, no breach of secondary shielding. No measurable (ie higher than natural background) radiation levels were ever measured outside the fence at Three Mile Island. I don't minimize the emotions of the people who lived in the area at the time. Their fears were real. But those fears were a result of purposely inadequate education of the general public about nuclear science by the Government. It is much easier to protect a "secret" if no one understands what you are talking about.
... or maybe slept through it in elementary school. Hell, my *high* *school* had a cyclotron, and this was the early-to-mid sixties. (If you're wondering, Central High, in Philly.)
But that's like the idiot article that a friend passed along to me, who's worried about the plutonium-powered RTG on the Pluto mission "polluting space with radioactivity" (I'm not making this up!)
mark
"And radiation did leave the plant during the accident."
t -sheets/3mile-isle.html ,the average dose to people nearby was 1 millirem. That's 1/6th of the dose from a full set of chest x-rays and less than 1% of yearly exposure to background radiation.
OH MY GOD! TRACE AMOUNTS OF RADIATION WERE RELEASED!
SHUT DOWN THE COAL-FIRED PLANTS NOW!
Yes, coal-fired plants do release radioactive materials into the atmosphere. There's one plant in Utah that dumps more radioactive material into the atmosphere in a single day than the TMI accident. (This is due to trace amounts of uranium in the coal burned by the plant.) Oh, let's not forget that in addition to being radioactive, the uranium that the aforementioned coal plant releases is chemically toxic too, as opposed to the krypton released by TMI which is chemically inert and hence there is no way for it to bind itself to anything in the body. Let's not forget all the other chemical nastiness in the emissions from coal plants.
According to http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fac
In short, coal-fired plants do more damage to the environment each day than the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history.
Chernobyl does not count here, because it could not have happened in a U.S. power reactor, here are a few reasons why:
U.S. power reactors are fully water-moderated. If the water boils off, the core will likely melt, but the reaction will begin slowing down because the water is needed for the reaction to continue. Chernobyl, on the other hand, was graphite moderated and hence the reaction could continue even when water boiled off.
U.S. power reactors don't contain large amounts of superheated flammable substances in their core. The initial incident at Chernobyl was a steam explosion that wouldn't have been bad if not for the fact that it exposed the superheated radioactive graphite in the core to air, which immediately began burning violently, dispersing the core's contents into the atmosphere.
Operators of U.S. power reactors don't disable all of their reactor's safety systems in order to run dangerous experiments. (Chernobyl's reactor should have scrammed itself long before the accident occurred, but the operators intentially disabled all of the reactor's safety systems.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I agree that the general reaction to anything nuclear is tantamount to instantaneous hysteria. Even if the "other side" is misguided, there is never harm in a public conversation about an issue that is disputed. I could understand wanting to know a bit more if this guy were living next to me.
Emergency legislation banning home cyclotrons? Gimme a break. Why not just have a councilmember go talk to the guy and say "Hey, look. Your neighbors are concerned. How about coming and giving a presentation to explain this thing to everyone before you install it?"
My problem is that every disagreement in this country has to be some kind of a crusade nowadays. Don't like something? Protest! Shortchanged at the store? Sue! Teacher give your kid a B-? Lynch him! Guess we've lost the art of conversation.
My opinion: If there is no serious, likely risk, let him have it.
nos laetus epulor qui would domito nos
I work in medicine. A cyclotron is just simply a big circular magnet. Electrocution from the power driving the magnets is the most dangerous thing possible, IMHO. Sheilding in the area where the drugs are bombarded by the machine to create the isotopes is quite adequate. Handeling procedures in place for these drugs and machines used in their production by the FDA, NRC, & other medical oversite organizations is very extensive. Here are just a few drugs off the top of my head that are used commonly that have short useful working span: Technetium-99m has a half-life of 6 hours. Fludeoxyglucose has a half-life of 109.8 minutes. C-11 methionine has a half-life of 20 minutes. ...and the list goes on.
Many drugs used in diagnosis & treatment of cancers & other ailments require an on-site cyclotron because of the short half-life. It is not possibly to make these drugs in the lower states & fly them to Alaska in a timely mannor for them to be effective for dianosis and/or treatment.
What this gentelman wants to do is needed & I commend him for trying to help others.The people who are against him building this thing are not very well informed.
"This is America... where the will of the few outweigh the outrage of the many..." - Unknown
I wonder if the same residents know that if they own a CRT they already have a small Particle Accelerator in their houses already! Oh no! We must outlaw TV's now!
Tes