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Swede Arrested For Building Nuclear Reactor
An anonymous reader writes "A 31 year old Swedish male was arrested for trying to build a nuclear reactor in his apartment. He got hold of radioactive material thru mail-order purchases and from smoke detectors. Police raided his apartment after he had contacted the Swedish Radiation Authority (Strålsäkerhetsmyndigheten) to inquire if it was legal to construct a nuclear reactor at home."
Geez, everyone's a critic. He's just trying to send electricity back onto the grid and he probably couldn't get approval from his landlord to put solar panels on his roof.
Never ask for permission, but just do!
I love that the only reason he got busted is because he asked if it was okay...
Seems like he should have either:
(a) Asked BEFORE acquiring the material or
(b) Not asked at all
Prisoner 1: "I raped a bitch and killed her. What're you in for?"
Prisoner 2: "I built a nuclear power plant in my kitchen."
Choice quote: "To get it to generate electricity you would need a turbine and a generator and that is very difficult to build yourself".
Yeah, it's not like thhey're nineteenth century steam technology like the redundant safety systems.
What's the big deal about being "arrested"? Police (and others) use their power of arrest all the time. The big story will be if he is charged with something.
...it's that bloody boy scout, up to his old tricks again.
he was questioned by the police because he apparently violated some Swedish nuclear material laws.
the story in short:
- he invested $950
- he bought radioactive material and dismantled one domestic fire alarm
- he blogged about his expirements
- he asked the Swedish authorities if it is allowed to build a nuclear reactor
- some official accompanied by police offices visited his flat and found no radiation problem
- he was questioned at a police stations and was afterwards released
- all the nuclear stuff was confiscated
He was not trying to generate electricity - "To get it to generate electricity you would need a turbine and a generator and that is very difficult to build yourself," he told HD. He was just tinkering! Obviously a DIY purist. This guy should get a geek medal or something. Utterly brilliant. And I am very pleased I'm not his neighbour.
This kid tried (badly, apparently) to do the same in the US a while back. I lived only a couple of streets over, but had left the area a dozen years before his attempt. I think I delivered newspapers to his house.
Is it really necessary to raid a guy who was asking for permission in the first place? Seems like he would have welcomed an "inspection" and handled things accordingly from there. Since he was asking for permission it sounds like he wasn't trying to break the law - give the guy some credit. All this is going to do is discourage others from inquiring and just doing whatever they're after.
I'm puzzled how this guy was going to build a "nuclear reactor" out of mail-order isotopes and smoke detectors. Smoke detectors usually contain Am-241, which is an alpha emitter. The mail order stuff I assume was uranium ore. Was he planning to create neutrons from (alpha, n) reactions and use those to trigger a few fissions from the uranium?
This sounds like his experiment bears as much similarity to a reactor as a balloon full of hairspray resembles a car engine.
Replace the words 'radioactive material' with the word 'fertiliser', given recent events, and see whether you are more/same/less worried.
Korma: Good
Who needs radioactive material to build a nuclear reactor? This is clearly no Macgyver.
Arrested? He should get his own TV show!
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Radioisotope thermoelectric generator
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator
But the problem was that it is not even illegal to do that in Sweden. It is only a legal "greyzone", and there is no laws for it either.
What should have happened is that the police deliver a letter stating "we need to approve if its legal or not", ask him to please halt the building process(in case it turns out is would not be legal after a law has been made), and then it goes trough the electeds, and if there are indeed large enough reasons agains it should be illegal.
Arresting him for it is outright rude.
lasting for decades
Or until someone busts out a hose. Whichever is sooner.
Prisoner 6: "I recorded a video of police beating the crap out of a teenager for no good reason at a bus stop."
http://neil.fraser.name/news/2010/12/23/
http://neil.fraser.name/news/2011/04/28/
P.S. There is a good ending to this story: follow the links to the blog of Neil Fraser, a Google engineer who bailed the guy out after he spent seven months in jail, accused of, since video recording police is not illegal... "attempted lynching"....
Keep in mind that you are replying to Reacher Gilt. If his neighbors get irradiated or killed, they can organize a boycott and let the invisible hand of the market take care of it. After being brutally boycotted, nobody else would ever dare try it again. That's why the police are unnecessary. If you get robbed, simply spread the word. People will not do business with the robber, and then he will starve to death. Much cleaner. You can't have the police stop him. See, he has unlimited and inalienable freedom. If you stop a murderer from murdering a child, you have stolen his freedom to murder, his natural and inalienable right. Without government in the way, he would be totally free to do so.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
How exactly one goes about building a nuclear reactor from mail order uranium (presumably depleted) and smoke detectors (about 1 microgram of Americium 241 each) ? The critical mass of Am 241 is over 50 Kg, so he would need 50 million smoke detectors to build a bomb. For a controlled, moderated reaction, much more, maybe hundreds of Kg. The technology to enrich natural uranium up to reactor-grade level is barely in the hands of states.
The fact that someone took him seriously and actually sent a guy with a detector AND a police squad to his house shows just how ridiculously incompetent the regulators are, and how paranoid people get when the word "radiation" is uttered.
If by "nuclear material" you mean legally exempt sources, there's a couple places. United nuclear is a marketer/reseller of the actual suppliers. Kind of like digikey and mouser do not manufacture resistors, they resell them. By legal definition exempt sources are harmless; don't sweat it.
If by "nuclear material" you mean legally non-exempt sources, there's a couple perfectly legal places. Just submit your valid non-expired NRC licensing information, which they'll verify, and then ship the goods. If I recall correctly UPS had a special shipping process that was horrifically expensive. I was very tangentially involved with the NBC gear at my army reserve unit and you could get detection gear non-exempt sources thru "the mail", used for testing equipment and also for training. Think of a licensed animal veterinarian getting licensed non-exempt radio-iodine shots to treat a cat with hyperthyroidism, this stuff is all just off the shelf and business as usual. Follow the law like everyone else in the business. I suppose you could forge a Swedish license to order stuff overseas, but get caught doing that and its well deserved hard time, both for the forger and the shipper who didn't bother to verify the license "just this one time".
If by "nuclear material" you mean normal household products that are radioactive, like low-sodium salt, or old camping lantern mantles, or smoke detectors, or pretty much anything made of granite, any one of numerous "rock collection minerals", well I guess start with amazon.com. If by some miracle, you have a radiation-free house, it can be just as radioactive as any normal house with just a couple mail order purchases.
If by "nuclear material" you mean something a meth head stole and is fencing on ebay to raise some money to buy sudafed, well I guess the answer is ebay.com.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I am presuming that you are British? In the UK being "arrested" merely means being questioned. It has little to no long term consequences. In other countries being "arrested" means actually being formally charged with an offence. An ""arrest" record stays on your record forever and many job interviewers specifically ask if one has ever been "arrested". As this is a public record it means answering it in the affirmative and hoping that the interviewer listens to your side of the experience. But many would just move on to another candidate. Thus an arrest record can be devastating.
With little gems on his blog page like "But I tried to cook Americium, Radium and Beryllium in 96% sulphuric-acid, to easier get them blended.", accompanied by photos of goop spilled all over his kitchen stove, I kinda agree with the authorities here....
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
What's the big deal about being "arrested"? Police (and others) use their power of arrest all the time. The big story will be if he is charged with something.
He won't get a charge. Neutrons don't carry a charge.
kind of a sad story. the kid did time for no reason and the cops and DA got off scot-free! ;(
and the kid only got off because he had a friend. a lot of us would not have had this kind of help and would rot in prison for a long time.
the system is broken if this can happen. HOW many months was he locked up - and for no good reason at all!
how much suffering did the cops and DA get?
NONE.
there is no justice. this thing happens a lot and the judges do nothing about it. they all know the system is an out of control machine and its best to just stay out of its lunatic way if you want to stay alive.
how very sad to hear this about our so-called justice system.
the DA should be serving LIFE for this. with no parole. then maybe the rich white fucks will think again before ruining a guy's life!
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I build mine in a rented garage, like all right-thinking people. It's right by the death ray and the free energy machines.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I also don't like a police state where you can get arrested for no apparent reason. But it's not like there was "no apparent reason". He was playing with goddamn nuclear material!
What should the police have done according to all you complaining people? Kindly request that he refrains from building a nuclear reactor, and that he delivers the nuclear material before noon the next day, because although it's a grey area in the law, it's best not to play with it in a residential area?
Of course they raided the apartment and confiscated the whole thing. And when you raid an apartment, and confiscate stuff, you also arrest people.
Good job, Sweden.
"Tiny" nuclear reactors can be as small as 9 inches by 16 inches, as in the SNAP-10 used to power a spacecraft in the 1960s (this was a full-fledged nuclear reactor, not an RTG). Much much smaller than a hot tub.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
It's better to ask for forgiveness than permission.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
The people upstairs are furious.
No brain, no pain.
But the problem was that it is not even illegal to do that in Sweden. It is only a legal "greyzone", and there is no laws for it either.
I'm sure Sweden has laws against things like reckless endangerment. That Americium is some nasty crap. It's not as toxic as Plutonium, but it's no fun.
Forget radioactivity for a minute. How would you feel if it turned out that your neighbor had been growing ebola cultures in his living room because he was convinced he could find a cure? I doubt if there are any specific laws against growing your own ebola cultures, but I'll damn sure betcha it's against plenty of laws that are on the books.
He was obviously making a good faith effort to find out the relevant laws and comply. He bought freely available materials over-the-counter so to speak. This isn't a bad guy but rather a curious one and justice is not served by punishing him. As some point people have forgotten that the law is guideline to justice and that actual justice should be served by the system, not strict compliance with the letter of the law.
i worry more about the insane things some crackpot might be doing with radioactive elements next door
you have strange priorities, because the regulators were RIGHT to overreact
if regulators got the impression some loony toon was playing with radioactivity in an apartment building, they aren't doing their job if they don't overreact
is this hysteria on my part? false alarmism on my part?
no, it is false complacency on your part to take the concept of some wackjob playing with radioactivity in tight living spaces lightly
and if you resent my use of the words "crackpot", "loony toon" and "wackjob", then you have no sense of responsibility, and judging by radioactive boyscout: swedish edition's sense of responsibility, there are far stronger words ic ould have chosen to use
you don't play with radioactivity in an apartment building. you don't do that. it is highly irresponsible. understand that, or understand nothing. this isn't about freedoms being trounced or overintrusive bureaucracy or the rights of the science minded to explore and build: it is about IRRESPONSIBILITY
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
the DA should be serving LIFE for this. with no parole. then maybe the rich white fucks will think again before ruining a guy's life!
Thaks for that calm, reasonable assesment of the situation, and for not resorting to race-baiting or a lynch-mob mentality. Individuals such as yourself are an invaluable part of the slashdot community. Keep up the good work!