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."

Comments

Now, Come On ...

[WrongSizeGlass]

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.

Lesson learned

[ArsenneLupin]

Never ask for permission, but just do!

Better to ask forgiveness than permission

[barlevg]

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

What are you in for?

[TehNoobTrumpet]

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."

Re:What are you in for?

[Chrisq]

Prisoner 5: "I published the encryption algorithm used by an American company, which is legal where I live"

Re:What are you in for?

[Anonymous Coward]

"And they all moved away from me on the Group "W" bench there."

Re:What are you in for?

[Amouth]

Arlo: "Littering." And they all moved away from me on the bench
there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I
said, "And creating a nuisance." And they all came back, shook my hand,
and we had a great time...

Re:What are you in for?

[Mikkeles]

Prisoner No. 6: "I am not a number!"

The hard parts

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:The hard parts

[plover]

Choice quote: "To get it to generate electricity you would need a turbine and a generator and that is very difficult to build yourself".

On its face, the quote is correct. A turbine and generator would be hard to build yourself. From scratch.

However, you can go to an automotive junkyard and pick up a used turbo unit for a few bucks, and while you're there, you can pick up an alternator, too. Now the problem is no harder than piping the steam from a pressure cooker through the turbo, and hooking the turbo to the alternator. Just add fission and you're on the grid!

A lot of people are playing with homemade turbine engines made from junked car parts. Perhaps they are deliberately trying to make it sound hard to discourage other Swedes with too many smoke detectors from trying a similar experiment.

Re:The hard parts

[jfengel]

That would get you out some electricity. Building it as a continuously-operating system is somewhat trickier.

Even trickier than that is getting it into your house power grid, which means syncing up the AC and other EE-grade power issues. You can buy the device you need, but it would end up costing more than just buying power from the power company, and be less convenient. (Plus, he was doing it in an apartment, probably without direct access to the mains.)

He didn't want to generate power, just do a little tinkering. He might well have hooked it up to a junk generator at some point, just to prove he could, but it wasn't the point. And the authorities were right to get nervous about it: the materials are toxic as well as radioactive, and putting more lives at risk than his. Get yourself a shed in the middle of nowhere next time.

Re:The hard parts

[Anonymous Coward]

Why assume he wanted electricity? A subcritical pile makes heat. Heat is energy, heat is expensive. It gets cold in europe in the winter. Stack the pile in your furnace in the winter, unstack it in the summer so it doesn't make heat. Easy peasy. Only real problem is the toxic result of fission. Also libyans might try to steal your pile, so send a HS kid back in time to tell you when you need to wear a bullet proof vest. Easy.

Re:The hard parts

[plover]

We're talking about building a kitchen table nuclear reactor, and your safety concern is that the junk-car turbo might not have been properly operated?

I like your style!

headline != article content

[rbrausse]

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

another attempt

[An ominous Cow art]

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.

How was this going to work?

[volsung]

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.

Re:How was this going to work?

[Dencrypt]

Here's his blog. Might explain some of his work.
richardsreactor.blogspot.com/

Belt buckles, shoelaces and a piece of gum

[Arancaytar]

Who needs radioactive material to build a nuclear reactor? This is clearly no Macgyver.

Re:Government destroys economy

[canajin56]

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.

Want details

[Stellian]

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.

Re:Want details

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

As an explosion risk, this guy ranks well below a kid with a pack of sparklers. However, I can see taking some precautions around anyone who has been playing with Am241-containing items in any atypical quantity...

That stuff is a reasonably zesty alpha emitter, and modestly well absorbed if taken internally, which isn't a good mix. If some noob has been fucking around, it is hardly unreasonable to take the precautionary step of assuming that he's manage to produce a bunch of toxic and radioactive dust.

Re:Want details

[elrous0]

I'm sure they were more worried about the radioactive material itself than the possibility he would actually succeed at building a reactor. He was never going to build a working reactor, but it's quite possible he might have acquired enough radioactive material to make himself and his neighbors very sick.

Re:Being arrested is no big deal... being CHARGED

[SEWilco]

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.

Re:Being arrested is no big deal... being CHARGED

[Xtifr]

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.

Re:I just put a skylight in my place.

[mikael]

... and glow in the dark.