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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."
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
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.
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.
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.
John
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.
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.
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.
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!
John