The 31-year-old Handl said he had tried for months to set up a nuclear reactor at home and kept a blog about his experiments, describing how he created a small meltdown on his stove.
h/t syncrodox
The 31-year-old Handl said he had tried for months to set up a nuclear reactor at home and kept a blog about his experiments, describing how he created a small meltdown on his stove.
h/t syncrodox
Shoulda just stuck to trying to solve the cold fusion enigma.
Seems to me if he had enough of either radium or americium to get a fission reaction going, he would have long since been dead of radiation sickness.
Heck, I have several small containers of americium around the house myself, and probably most everyone else here has some, too. It is used in ionization-type smoke detectors.
I lost all my nice pitchblende samples. Pisses me off.
If Handl really wants to split atoms, he could build himself a small cyclotron. You can likely find plans on the ‘net.
Pretty much stupidity all around. I like how he got caught because he basically sent off a message to the authorities saying “is this legal?”. Of course, they respond by sending people to arrest him.
Now, I’m not criticizing them for arresting him, because he was clearly – and dangerously – breaking the law. But I hope they don’t throw the book at him, so long as he agrees to stop. I mean, do they really think the terrorists are going to be asking for permission?
I believe I recall a similar case here in America that involved a teenager trying to build a nuclear reactor as a hobby.
Ah, here we go. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn
And there you go, gordinkneehill: “Hahn diligently amassed this radioactive material by collecting small amounts from household products, such as americium from smoke detectors, thorium from camping lantern mantles, radium from clocks and tritium (as neutron moderator) from gunsights.”
This article is so utterly, unbelievably stupid. There’s no fissile material in radium, americium, thorium or pitchblende. And even if it was, it would do nothing in the absence of a moderator. In the case of radium, you can’t even make a fissile material out of it with a breeder reactor.
No, Gord, it doesn’t matter how much of these materials he had or how hot he got them.
As for David Hahn, his experiment was completely impossible. He would have had to do isotope separation to get fissile materials from uranium, and he would have had to have access to a breeder reactor to get fissile thorium.
Clearly these dolts knew nothing about the differences between radioactive, fissionable and fissile, let alone neutron cross sections.
A Swedish A bomb you say… Mama Mia!
I am a bit puzzled as to why the authorities sent in the police to a potentially “hot” site. There is an urban legend or two about a McGiver wanna-be or two stockpiling the same sort of nuclear material in their garage only to be detected by the Feds.
Has a warrant gone out for the arrest of the Curies?
Yeah, it used to be common law took into account intent, though prosecutors have been diligently working to remove that, it’s obvious this guys intent was not evil, & he does not appear to have harmed anyone.
Consequently the punishment in a justice, rather than a legal system, should be minimal.
It’s kind of like finding a child with loaded firearm, when the source NORMALLY has everything locked away and carefully safed. As opposed to Case B where it was handed to the child with evil intent.
One case is worth legal attention, the other, a dope slap.
There are undoubtedly Swedish laws regarding the safe handling of the materials, but there should be some leniency if there was no harm to others. Inquisitiveness is not a crime.
“Inquisitiveness is not a crime.”
I hate to say it, but in the world we live in today, if you ask too many questions, the authorities will shut you up.
We have lost much of our freedom. We have to fight to get it back. Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant discussed this last evening for a full hour on Ezra’s Sun TV show.
The global economic meltdown is bad enough, but the simultaneous meltdown of our freedoms is worse.
Actually constructing a bomb…chemical or thermo-nuclear depends on acquiring the components.
Suggested reading…”THE SUM OF ALL FEARS” by Tom Clancy. Well researched it presents the complexity of for example machining many components to optical quality. Then the critical firing circuits, which among other things can degrade in the presence of radioactive material.
It remains to be seen whether the NORKs have actually succeeded in producing a reliable/functioning nuclear weapon, let alone a design small light enough to fit in a missle nose cone.
It took the US decades to accomplish the miniturization thing and the Soviets longer….hence their early production of massive boosters…which gave them a critical early boost(pun intended) in the space race.
He should stick to music. Sorry, I disagree with the sentiment here, especially on typical Scandinavian penology. I suppose he would have got 3 years had he obliterated Stockholm? Ignorance is no excuse; even I would know better!
Who’s to say that he isn’t a young Oppenheimer? Sweden may have gotten the bomb and an arms race with Finland would have followed leading one of them to build cars with fins and travel to the moon. It’s called progress.
excuse me, since when is it clearly against the law to split atoms?
maybe for you in your country but not in this one.
if you can cause a nuclear meltdown in your home stove and the Iranians are still trying to build a reactor, then shouldn’t you be getting a Nobel award or something? Why would doing this be illegal?
“There’s no fissile material in radium, americium, thorium or pitchblende.”
Pitchblende, by definition, contains uranium, which would include the fissile isotope U-235. So technically, there would be fissile materials present. However, the small amount of fissile U-235 relative to the more stable U-238 wouldn’t be enough to form a sustaning reaction. (U238 is fissionable but not considered “fissile”.) It would need to be refined, converted into a useable form, and most likely enriched (especially without a moderator, such as graphite or heavy water). You certainly couldn’t sustain a reaction of pitchblende on the stove.
But it would be cool if you could.
Blanks, you are truly an idiot. All nuclear activities are regulated in every country by a statute similar to Canada’s Nuclear Safety and Control Act. Among many other things it does so by requirements to hold a licence or licences for possession of anything more than de minimis quantities of nuclear materials. In addition, all nuclear processes themselves require a licence from the CNSC. This is universally true in ALL countries, Blanks.
Also, the Iranians aren’t trying to build a reactor; that’s easy. They’re trying to separate enough U-235 to build nuclear weapons.
Rob, at one time you could. The natural concentration of U235 in uranium was once well above five per cent, compared to the 0.7 per cent it is today. The reason is the shorter half life of U235. About a billion years ago there was in fact a natural nuclear fission reactor in the uranium deposit in Oklo, Gabon. It lasted several dozen million years or so before exhausting its fuel. Technically what happened is that the fuel built up so many neutron absorbers that it shut down.
Also, U238 is not fissionable under any circumstances; only U235 is. What you can do with U238 is breed it into Plutonium 239 which is highly fissile.
Also remember that you still don’t have a reaction until you have a critical mass, and you sure won’t get that on top of a stove. With natural uranium, you need several hundred tons of it in a heavy water moderator. With pitchblende today, it’s simply not possible in any amount. The fissile material density is simply too low.
This all sounds like part of the plot of an almost forgotten 80’s movie.
Rather than arresting him, shouldn’t Candu or Fujitsu or somebody hire this guy? A fission reactor design that fits in a TEU shipping container is a possible game-changer for the world.
“A fission reactor design that fits in a TEU shipping container is a possible game-changer for the world.”
I recall seeing somewhere the Russian’s had something of the sort awhile back. Some were even all-terrain self propelled.
There are lots of mini-reactor designs out there. One is being installed by Toshiba in Alaska.
I wonder if this guy glows in the dark?
Seriously to go this far he has to have screws in his head.
More like Young Frankenstein, than an Oppenheimer.
Einstein can’t be classed as witless.
He said, Atoms was the littlest,
and if you mess around with splittiness,
you’ll scare everybody shitless.
Oh, there ain’t half been some clever bastards…
Everyone needs a hobby, alcoholism gets boring after awhile….
So if I phoned up the police and told them I was stockpiling radioactive potassium40 would I get arrested? The stockpile would consist – of a roomfull of canned tomatoes.
This story is simply idiotic and reflects the amazing scientific ignorance of most people. Is buying 100 smoke detectors enough to get you charged with unauthorized posession of nuclear material? A far more dangerous source of radioactivity would be obtainable by fusing hydrogen or deuterium in a fusor and there are devices which can produce an impressive number of neutrons. Just need a bit of skill at machining, a vacuum pump and a source of electrical power. Easy to do in ones own garage and induce nuclear reactions in nearby materials with thermal neutrons. No dramatic mushroom shaped clouds, just invisible deadly subatomic particles.