Swedish man caught trying to split atoms at home

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_SWEDEN_NUCLEAR?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-08-03-11-33-45

by danso • 15 years ago

157 76 15 years ago

hosted.ap.org

pavel_lishin• 15 years ago

sliceof314• 15 years ago

I love how he's doing it in his apartment kitchen. Not his house located in an isolated forest, but an apartment building....

seagaia• 15 years ago

Poor guy. Someone should give him a chance at a lab or something.

lowglow• 15 years ago

A century ago they were called revolutionaries, today we call them criminals.

daimyoyo• 15 years ago

A century ago, we didn't realize that radiation is lethal. They didn't arrest him for making science, they arrested him for having dangerous materials without the proper safety equipment.

kls2• 15 years ago

Right, I am usually very anti-regulations for most all things. But there are some things that are so obviously a public safety issue that regulation is a no brainier. But it does beg the question, should their be a safe outlet for people like this to pursue their intellectual curiosity without having to pay 100k to a university.

v21• 15 years ago

What dangerous materials? They checked the apartment and did not find significant levels of radiation.

zacharycohn2• 15 years ago

It's unfortunate that when he requested more information on the legality of his situation, instead of reaching out to him and informing him he wasn't supposed to have this material and working with him to dispose of it, they sent the police. It seems like an overreaction, especially considering HE reached out to THEM.

Andrew_Quentin• 15 years ago

That is why you contact a lawyer who usually are under implied confidentiality clauses.

zacharycohn2• 15 years ago

I suppose. But it makes a lot of sense to contact the organization who's job it is is to manage the stuff, rather than tracking down a lawyer who specializes in radioactive materials law.

mkramlich3• 15 years ago

Tell that to the people living in adjacent apartments. Tell that to the kids who unknowingly live in the apartment afterwards. He's a dangerous fool.

hammerdr2• 15 years ago

Not the children!

Seriously, the dude is pretty clearly ill informed about what he was doing. In the end, though, he asked for help from the right place. He didn't do irreparable harm (or any harm period) to anyone. There was no significant amount of radiation found in the apartment.

Most people on HN are going to see right through politician scare tactics. In this case, it seems completely reasonable for this guy to get a slap on the wrist and probation from use of radioactive materials (that is, if caught with radioactive materials again, he is in for some serious jail time).

Edit:

It is also important to send the right message: dealing with dangerous chemicals and substances is dangerous and should be handled in a controlled environment. However, you should always feel comfortable asking your regulatory agencies what should and should not be done. And intellectual curiosity isn't going to get you thrown in jail.

ConceitedCode• 15 years ago

Does anybody have the link the blog? Seems like it'd be an interesting read.

codeswimmer• 15 years ago

http://richardsreactor.blogspot.com/

alecco2• 15 years ago

Before you jump into "poor guy" mode, please have a look at his blog:

http://richardsreactor.blogspot.com/2011/05/110521-meltdown....

I'm all for freedom and the scientific spirit, but this guy was out of control and risking the health of people around him.

steins• 15 years ago

Lots of stupidity, no criminal intent. I don't think he should goto jail.

alecco2• 15 years ago

Maybe not jail but at least some community work, perhaps on something like cleaning up industrial waste.

corin_• 15 years ago

Sometimes punishment despite no malicious intent is required. For example I can't imagine many drunk drivers are doing it with the aim of killing people, but I'd rather those people got their license revoked / fined / short prison time than everyone had no incentive not to drive when drunk. And if I were to ever drive drunk and get caught, as much as I would hate whatever punishment came my way, I'd still speak up for the law.

This is such a one-off case that it doesn't need swooping examples quite as much, but the same logic stands - if something can have terrible consequences, to the extent that the government should be preventing it, just telling people "please don't do this" likely isn't enough.

gst• 15 years ago

He lives in Sweden - not the US. So even if he is sentenced to jail it's very likely that most or all of the sentence is suspended on probation.

gamble2• 15 years ago

Honestly, it's a good thing he was stopped. He's contaminated his cooking area with radium and beryllium. Is someone that sloppy really going to strip that room down to studs to decontaminate it, or is he going to leave it to poison the next tenants in his flat?

dsl• 15 years ago

Thank you for providing a fantastic example of how people overreact when it comes to radiation. They tested the apartment when the police arrested him and found no dangerous levels of radiation, which means he knew to limit the scale of his experiments to what was safe.

kragen• 15 years ago

If the amount of radium were sufficient to be dangerous, they would have detected it when they raided. Beryllium is another matter, I suppose, but it's possible that the amount of beryllium was also safe.

bandushrew• 15 years ago

He contaminated his own cooking area.

Surely that is his problem?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stubbins_Ffirth

It is unreasonable people who improve the world.

geuis• 15 years ago

I agree. Thanks for the link. My jaw dropped an inch when I saw the photo of his stove.

jff• 15 years ago

This man was standing at his stove, smoking, cooking up a mixture of beryllium, radium, and americium in 96% sulfuric acid. And then it blasted up into the air. Oh, but don't worry, he didn't drink the juice or take the pills!

He should know better than this after the first week of 9th grade science.

gus_massa• 15 years ago

It was not a nuclear meltdown, it was probably only a chemical "meltdown". He made some mistakes and probably the mix split everywhere and perhaps there was a small fire, but it was not an uncontrolled nuclear reaction (like in Three Mile Island, Chernobyl or Fukushima). He used a nuclear word to describe the mess, to make it sound cool.

But, probably he was accumulating to much radioactive material, and he was not taking proper safety measures in a populated area. So probably it is a good idea to stop him.

jaekwon• 15 years ago

how long before a man gets caught flying to the moon?

Symmetry• 15 years ago

Not too long: http://dvice.com/archives/2011/06/first-test-of-d.php But they're thoughtful enough to do their launches off in the ocean, where an accident won't kill bystanders.

pizza• 15 years ago

http://www.unitednuclear.com/

sliverstorm2• 15 years ago

Tritium on his keychain? Ergo placed in his pocket? This guy has no fear of radiation whatsoever.

bootload• 15 years ago

From memory Tritium or H-3 is relatively safe unless ingested and is not classed as a radiation risk. [0]

[0] "Nuclide Safety Data Sheet Hydrogen-3" Beta radiation won't penetrate dead skin and has approximately 6mm penetration capacity. http://hpschapters.org/northcarolina/NSDS/3HPDF.pdf

thaumaturgy• 15 years ago

The problem is that Tritium is a lightweight gas which makes it very easy to ingest by inhalation.

uvdiv• 15 years ago

It's a novelty item, the point is it makes it easy to find in the dark:

http://unitednuclear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info...

Seems benign to me, since beta radiation won't penetrate the glass.

sliverstorm2• 15 years ago

Oh! There we go, of course- it's encased in glass. I forgot about that when I was thinking about skin vs beta. Thank you for clearing that up.

steven_h2• 15 years ago

As a chemistry major, I've honestly seen stupider things allowed to happen in a supposedly supervised laboratory than what this guy was doing.

Was it wrong that he was doing it in his apartment, putting all the other tenants at risk? Absolutely, but I don't think he should be put in jail, just reprimanded and told where to perform experiments in a safe environment. Who knows, maybe his experiment would have worked w/o all the cigarette smoke and ash.

The only reason I post this comment is because this guy is exhibiting the hacker spirit that we all do, just in a physical science instead of computer science. I would be upset if someone told me not to play with data structures they way they won't let him play with chemicals. (Again, I know its not the same thing in practice but it's the principle.)

zasz2• 15 years ago

When the practice involves potentially killing yourself and poisoning other people, the principle would seem to be not the same.

steven_h2• 15 years ago

I totally agree but that would be the in the implementation; the principle is an abstract idea, [1] such as the principles of modern physics.

I know it seems nit-picky but as someone with an interest in chemistry and comp sci, and a degree in both, I can appreciate the curiosity that comes with science. It's what encouraged me to study the science.

[1] http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/principle

lutorm6• 15 years ago

Your hacking practice involves potentially unleashing viruses and breaking into other systems. Hence, it should be regulated.

Just wait. They just come for the physical sciences first, but things are definitely going in the direction of making programming a restricted activity.

mkramlich3• 15 years ago

Principles don't kill. Practices do.

mynameishere• 15 years ago

Obligatory, if you are new to the internet; the radioactive boyscout:

http://www.dangerouslaboratories.org/radscout.html

rglover• 15 years ago

Never read that before, but wow. Scary to think what people can accomplish at home with a few books and a bit of social engineering. I'm guessing David was/is a fringe case, but regardless, the parent story here shows it's not as difficult as one might think. The spooky part: David's home was a short 40 minute drive from my own home in Ohio. Ack.

badusername• 15 years ago

LOL

paulnelligan• 15 years ago

never has the expression 'don't try this at home' been more appropriate!

lutorm6• 15 years ago

As someone who experimented pretty freely with science at home as a teenager, I'm perturbed by the over-reacting and jumping to conclusions associated with "science-based hacking" shown here. Just because you do things that has the potential to do damage doesn't mean that you have the intent to or that you will. Pretty much anything can do damage if you want it to; just because I have a baseball bat doesn't mean that I will hit someone with it. There are things that really kill people in our society, chiefly cars and guns. Having those are mostly legal, but doing experiments on your stove: dangerous, must be stopped. Some attention to proportion is called for.

flarg• 15 years ago

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14403432

Swedish man caught trying to split atoms at home

Related Stories