6 ms·

'Naive' science fan faces jail for plutonium import

189 points by geox 2y ago

vintagedave 2y ago
I’ve seen ads for buying small quantities of elements including selling a full periodic table. We probably all have. I wonder how many of us on HN could have been in this poor guy’s position. The writeup makes it sounds typically Australian in a massive law enforcement overreaction over something innocent and minimal.
- jjk166 2y ago
  Beyond a person's life being turned upside down, one also has to wonder how much this investigation and "major hazmat incident" cost taxpayers.
  - johnsmth 2y ago
    Would have been easier too, just to send a car to the kid's house to knock on the door. Here in the US cops would do it for the PR, sometimes.
    - Canada 2y ago
      They could have just kept it at customs and sent a letter saying it's illegal and let that be the end of it. Whoever was involved in creating a circus out of it should be fired.
      - rl3 2y ago
        Thank you, Canada. Your position is common sense and level-headed.
      - ptsneves 2y ago
        When you say it like that it is so obvious. If we collectively kept our heads out of our asses and just thought how to deescalate things rather than be parsimonious little nobodies we would all be better. The other day somebody said I could not join a huge table in a coworking space because there was a meeting. Private meeting tables or rooms are paid and require reservation and that table was in the common area. I got annoyed because the guy did not ask if I could wait and go to another table, instead he just matter of fact told me they were having a meeting and would rather I would not sit in the free seats. I told him that I believe this was a public usage table, to which he then asked if I could allow them to remain alone. I considered being a prick but then I considered, what would be the gain of antagonising a dude that also goes there often and all for the pleasure of sitting in my favourite table? I stewed a bit but the next day I forgot it. If I had confronted him I would be reminded of the incident every time I crossed the guys path.
  - bigfatkitten 2y ago
    In Australia, most major criminal matters are handled at the state level. The Commonwealth Director of Prosecutions has form for this. They don't do much other than welfare fraud cases, and so when they get a brief that's actually interesting for a change, they tend to go full ham. Whether it's actually in the public interest for them to prosecute isn't a factor they seem to give much consideration. Another recent fiasco caused by their heavy handedness: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/aug/11/afp-counter-terrorism-operation-that-targeted-13-year-old-with-autism-cost-more-than-500000 https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/aug/...
    - trhway 2y ago
      >Another recent fiasco caused by their heavy handedness: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/aug/ https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/aug/... "He spent three months in custody before he was granted bail in October 2022, after an earlier bail was revoked because he failed to comply with conditions." a 13 year old with autism "failed to comply with conditions".
      - mrkeen 2y ago
        That kid stated he tried to contact ISIS, had pledged allegiance to the current ISIS leader, expressed a desire to be an ISIS recruiter, and to build and detonate a bomb at a government building. (June 2021). It looks like he was searched on 6 October 2021 and granted bail on 8 October. I don't know what the conditions of his bail were, but when it was revoked in June 2022, his Google searches involved topics such as “10 ways to cover up a murder”, “how to murder”, “16 steps to kill someone and not get caught” and references to a schoolteacher. https://www.childrenscourt.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2024-01/Application%20for%20bail%20by%20Carrick%20%28a%20pseudonym%29%20%5B2022%5D%20VChC%204.pdf
        nukem222 2y ago
        Damn, why didn't they prosecute that instead? Probably would have won some public support. Declarations of a desire to commit violence are an entirely different beast than purchasing plutonium, and far more worth prosecuting.
- SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
  Such ads are common for uranium, which is less dangerous and thus less restricted. Plutonium is extremely illegal and not included in any periodic table collection I've ever seen.
  - windhaven 2y ago
    From the collections of elements that I’ve seen, they’d likely include some uranium in that slot, with a note that there’s a chance of trace amounts of plutonium present from natural decay.
d_silin 2y ago
I wonder where one can even order plutonium online? I am aware of legal way to buy some uranium, but that's within US only.
- dghlsakjg 2y ago
  This claims to have plutonium https://engineeredlabs.com/products/plutonium-element-cube-trinitite-sample https://engineeredlabs.com/products/plutonium-element-cube-t.... Although other studies of trinitite have failed to find any. It also appears that the soviets used plutonium in fire detectors, and that people were selling these sources at one point https://www.luciteria.com/element-cubes/plutonium-for-sale https://www.luciteria.com/element-cubes/plutonium-for-sale
  - White_Wolf 2y ago
    you could buy the ones with Americium in most of the EU and US too. I think you can still find some, here and there.
    - londons_explore 2y ago
      You can still buy Americium detectors. They're more reliable because they don't stop working when a little dust gets in them like optical sensors.
- themaninthedark 2y ago
  Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/elementcollection/comments/mf5v0u/in_the_market_for_some_americium_neptunium_or/ https://www.reddit.com/r/elementcollection/comments/mf5v0u/i...) says that you were able to get some here: https://www.luciteria.com/elements-for-sale https://www.luciteria.com/elements-for-sale but I didn't see it listed. edit: found it but discontinued... https://www.luciteria.com/element-cubes/plutonium-for-sale https://www.luciteria.com/element-cubes/plutonium-for-sale
- kotaKat 2y ago
  I was going to guess United Nuclear myself but that was the uranium supplier ;)
puppycodes 2y ago
Small uranium samples are very often used to test geiger counters and is pretty common and not dangerous unless it becomes dust. Even then a far cry from anything massively concerning. in terms of spicy rocks doesnt the specific plutonium(number) make a massive difference?
- kragen 2y ago
  Not really.
  - CrossVR 2y ago
    Given that this guy was charged under a non-proliferation act it makes a massive difference whether it's Pu-238 or Pu-239.
    - kragen 2y ago
      Why, because one has a critical mass of 9-10 kg and the other has a critical mass of 11 kg? You'd think it would matter a great deal more that the amount he obtained was apparently 35 nanograms, so he was about a hundred million samples short of a working reactor.
      - perihelions 2y ago
        Pu-238 isn't usably fissile for weapons purposes (and apparently[0] isn't regulated as such (?)). Just look at the hero image on its Wikipedia entry[1]. A critical mass would have >5 kW of decay heat. [0] https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/part071/part071-0004.html https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/part071/p... ("Fissile material means the radionuclides uranium-233, uranium-235, plutonium-239, and plutonium-241") [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-238 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-238 ("Plutonium-238 oxide pellet glowing from its decay heat") https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General-purpose_heat_source#Stages_of_assembly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General-purpose_heat_source#St...
        2y ago
rdtsc 2y ago
> Lidden pleaded guilty to offences under Australia's nuclear non-proliferation act that carry a possible 10-year jail sentence. The bureaucratic apparatus, especially dealing with law enforcement always concentrates people who enjoy punishing others. Is Australia particularly bad about it perhaps? It seems they get some kind of sadistic enjoyment out of it. It's scary that everyone in the chain here: judge Leonie Flannery, Australian Border Force officials, police, even his employer just had a grand 'ol time punishing this guy. Everyone could have stopped, realizing it's obvious what's happening, give him a warning have him turn in this sample. And the best part for them, there is no repercussion for it. Everyone can turn around and publicly proclaim they just "did their job".
- logicchains 2y ago
  >Is Australia particularly bad about it perhaps I'm an Australian, and Australia is absolutely terrible in this regard. There's a saying: the problem with Australia isn't that it was founded by prisoners, it's that it was founded by prison guards. I've lived in quite a few countries and never found anywhere with as many smug and self-righteous people as back home. There used to be two kinds of Australia: the larrikin (fun loving, prankster) Australia, and the wowser (fun hating) Australia, but in recent years the wowsers have thoroughly won.
  - Larrikin 2y ago
    Hopefully they make a come back
  - alabastervlog 2y ago
    > larrikin This has become a kind of stock character (or, at least, a stock archetype for characters) in Australian media, and can be seen in lots of e.g. Australian or heavily Australian-influenced films, often portrayed in a basically-positive, if imperfect, light. This sort of attitude toward life and behavior is on display among several characters in the Peter Weir film Gallipoli, for instance, including and especially Mel Gibson's. In that film, the wowser-est folks are mostly British, because national myth-making :-)
  - 2y ago
tristor 2y ago
The behaviors demonstrated by Lidden here in the article sound to me like classic autistic behaviors. Is there any protection under the law in Australia for the fact that he's acting out an obsession tied to his "personality disorder"? Obsessive collecting, the interest in trains, and ultimately an overabundance of honesty and trying to rigidly follow rules to his own detriment, the court system should also be looking out for him as a defendant and not furthering this travesty of justice.
- mmooss 2y ago
  > overabundance of honesty I don't agree with that part. The immediate cost will be outweighed, I expect, by the impact on the judge; possibly, if Lidden isn't jailed, on the employer who will remember that Lidden was so honest under pressure and at personal cost; and on everyone around Lidden for the rest of their life, having earned trust that few of us have.
  - tristor 2y ago
    I really really really wish that this is true, unfortunately it very often isn't. The Just World Fallacy is something I wish were not a fallacy.
    - mmooss 2y ago
      Save the nonsense characterizations and dismissals. What actual evidence do you have? In my experience, that's how things work - not 100% but it's a powerful effect.
      - tristor 2y ago
        Evidence of what? That Lidden is autistic? None, other than the contents of the article and my own knowledge of those traits (that I myself have). That the Just World Fallacy is strong and we all get kicked in the pants because of our better expectations? My evidence is a good 40-50% of my entire life's story, where I have been punished repeatedly for doing the right thing. To be clear, I am not being dismissive of your comment. I wish very deeply that it were true, and that I am wrong. Unfortunately I don't believe that to be the case.
mmooss 2y ago
Does anyone know how much plutonium and how enriched? (I assume it's not pure plutonium, which I think would be more pure than 'weapons grade'?)
- philipkglass 2y ago
  According to the Luciteria listing linked by other commenters, this was a microscopic sample of plutonium, as plutonium oxide, enclosed as part of an old Soviet smoke detector. It's like the radioactive americium source used in modern smoke detectors but made with an element one atomic number lower. A plutonium bomb core requires a mass of several kilograms. This sample was 35 nanograms, or about 11 orders of magnitude away from being a nuclear weapons proliferation risk. The authorities might as well accuse someone of running a biological warfare program for having bacteria on their house's doorknobs. In addition to the minute quantity, this analysis of a Soviet smoke detector source shows that the plutonium was mixed isotopes, containing only about 73% Pu-239: https://carlwillis.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/analysis-of-soviet-smoke-detector-plutonium/ https://carlwillis.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/analysis-of-sovi... It is not weapons grade plutonium, though it is higher in Pu-239 than plutonium from modern spent reactor fuel.
  - ThinkBeat 2y ago
    All an evil doer has to do then is order a veritable mountain of samples and lump them all together once he has enough. </s>
  - mmooss 2y ago
    > Luciteria listing Did they buy it from Luciteria? This article doesn't say.
IshKebab 2y ago
Shame on his employer for firing him. That's probably the shittiest behaviour here (which is saying something).
- bawolff 2y ago
  Indeed. Does australia not have laws against wrongful termination?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - denkmoon 2y ago
    We have (had?) good employee protections but these have been degraded over time especially in the lower end of the job market. The train union is fairly powerful, if he had completed his training the termination probably wouldn't have happened but trainees get less protections. This poor bugger has only done "the right thing" at every stage and has been completely screwed for it. Shameful. Makes me ashamed to live here.
- GolDDranks 2y ago
  Yeah "They terminated him for lack of transparency and honesty", which is ridiculous since the opposite was the case. (He was being transparent and honest towards his employer that he is being investigated.)
thih9 2y ago
> border force officials had engaged in duplicitous and unfair conduct by returning some of the material to Lidden after initially seizing it What was the reasoning here - why was the material returned? I assume this would happen in some exceptional scenario and the default behavior would be to seize it. Is it not the case?
ungreased0675 2y ago
What shameful behavior by the government. Let the man have his hobby.
perihelions 2y ago
If Theodore Gray (the eccentric millionaire co-founder of Wolfram) doesn't have a plutonium sample in his famous periodic table, I really doubt there's any available for sale in the US, outside of NRC-regulated places. He'd had found one by now, if one existed. Is it possible someone confused plutonium with polonium? That's the Occam's razor here.
- gjsman-1000 2y ago
  Apparently this was the offending Plutonium purchase. https://www.luciteria.com/element-cubes/plutonium-for-sale?srsltid=AfmBOoo5jE4XtGHbjpsQJSPgZ4FHlVh60CME-cbJPs1cuBf5S8AWsYfk https://www.luciteria.com/element-cubes/plutonium-for-sale?s...
  - perihelions 2y ago
    I'll be eating my hat, then; this thing is indeed real, https://carlwillis.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/analysis-of-soviet-smoke-detector-plutonium/ https://carlwillis.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/analysis-of-sovi... ("Analysis of Soviet smoke detector plutonium" (2017)) (and HN thread, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13616574 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13616574 ) That analysis says these contained about 40 μCi of Pu-239, or 0.7 mg.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    How do we know?
SoftTalker 2y ago
Reminds me of the Nuclear Boy Scout story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- mmmlinux 2y ago
  Honestly no. That guy was fucking around and found out in the end. This guy ordered something that was basically supposed to be a novelty for collecting purposes and has been fucked for it.
dynm 2y ago
Fun fact: Americans are seemingly allowed to own up to 1.5 kg of yellowcake. (That's pure uranium, refined from uranium ore, but not enriched to extract the 0.7% U-235 from the 99.3% U-238.) Citation: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/part040/part040-0022.html https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/part040/p...
- leblancfg 2y ago
  According to that link that's for dispersible form (gas, powder) – it's up to 7kg in solid form ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- ninalanyon 2y ago
  > That's pure uranium, Not exactly. Yellowcake is about 80% uranium oxide: "Triuranium octoxide (U3O8), the most stable uranium oxide; yellowcake typically contains 70 to 90 percent triuranium octoxide)" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_oxide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_oxide
  - GauntletWizard 2y ago
    The atomic weight of Uranium is 238; the atomic weight of Oxygen is 16. By weight, Triuranium octoxide is ~84% Uranium. Even if you're only counting the uranium in the Triuranium octoxide, that's still 60+% of the total mass coming from Uranium Atoms. I'd take that purity any day.
    - justatdotin 2y ago
      purity invites gradation; 'pure' does not.
- 01100011 2y ago
  United Nuclear has it for sale. No more dangerous than ore samples unless you cut a line and snort it.
  - throwaway743 2y ago
palmotea 2y ago
> Lidden ordered the [plutonium] from a US-based science website and they were delivered to his parents' home. So private ownership of plutonium is legal in the US, or is that site about to get shut down?
- giantg2 2y ago
  Technically, I think it would get shutdown. Plutonium, U-235, and some other stuff requires special approval to own. But it's possible that if it's not pure and was part of a product, that it might be overlooked. There's probably a few nanograms of Plutonium in the legally allowed Uranium samples that you can own.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- perihelions 2y ago
  I think small test sources are exempt, https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/part071/part071-0015.html https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/part071/p... ("[10 CFR] §71.15 Exemption from classification as fissile material")
FpUser 2y ago
Sadistic police state masquerading as something else since they have elections.
AngryData 2y ago
Outlawing tiny samples of specific elements is so ridiculous. Whats he gunna do with it, nuke a small ant hill with it? Make a neat spectrograph of it?
- colechristensen 2y ago
  The median lethal dose of Polonium-210 is about 50 nanograms. (1 twenty millionth of a gram) 30 mg of plutonium administered properly is fatal. Much less will give you a significant increased risk for cancer. These things are dangerous in any quantity and no amount of enthusiasm overrides the risk when it comes to writing laws.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - atomicnumber3 2y ago
    1lb of hammer administered properly is also fatal and I can buy that at the store. EDIT: this also appears to be 30 nanograms, not mg.
  - achierius 2y ago
    You can buy bleach at the store, but if you drink a mouthful of it you're probably toast. We don't ban things just because they kill you when you eat them.
    - somenameforme 2y ago
      To say nothing of the fact that if you accidentally mix a bit with ammonia, which is extremely easy to do because they are both used in cleaning, you just created a deadly chemical weapon that is also a gas. The world would be much better, even if perhaps a bit 'scarier', if people treated each other like adults.
  - cyberax 2y ago
    You can buy a polonium anti-static brush for photofilm cleaning, with about 1 millicurie (~250 nanograms) of polonium. Absolutely legally: https://amstat.com/products/anti-static-brush-with-ionizing-cartridge-1.html https://amstat.com/products/anti-static-brush-with-ionizing-...
mordymoop 2y ago
Disparaging the boot is a bootable offense.
xeckr 2y ago
One reads this kind of story and simply wants to weep.
aussieguy1234 2y ago
And this is the biggest weakness of the current top down model of governance that we have. Id like to see a system where judging those who have supposedly done wrong is done almost entirely by the community, not the government. Government/security forces (including police) intervention should be a last resort. The law has little gaps like this where someone well meaning who is not intending to break a law inadvertently does so. Minorities tend to have the law applied to them more harshly. Not everyone has safe access to the legal system, i.e. undocumented migrants. If you are in a marginalised group and have a crime committed against you, your experience will likely be different compared to what a white heterosexual christian male would experience.
- ciabattabread 2y ago
  > Id like to see a system where judging those who have supposedly done wrong is done almost entirely by the community, not the government. Government/security forces (including police) intervention should be a last resort. I'm sure all those children abused by priests will agree with you.
  - aussieguy1234 2y ago
    What if the abuse can't be 100% proven but you have multiple victims? In this type of case, the perp gets away with it alot of the time. However...if judged by the community, its highly unlikely that they would get away with it. The law fails victims of all kinds of sexual abuse all the time, to the point where most perpetrators get away with it. Gaps the legal system let some paedophile priests get away with it and also lead to unjust prosecutions like we see in the article.
- jdsully 2y ago
  That's basically the entire premise behind a jury trial.
  - aussieguy1234 2y ago
    Well that's the intent anyway. In reality, the jury has to follow the law as written and there are gaps with various consequences. If they try to make some ruling outside of the law, it would just get appealed and oveturned.
kbutler 2y ago
> Lidden ordered the [plutonium] from a US-based science website and they were delivered to his parents' home. Anybody have the URL? https://www.luciteria.com/element-cubes/plutonium-for-sale?srsltid=AfmBOoqCdoAaBmfMtdNYsDtDhxjd93tRheVrRFDWGsqC61FW-xVs8UmF https://www.luciteria.com/element-cubes/plutonium-for-sale?s... says "sold out" https://web.archive.org/web/20200904082652/https://www.luciteria.com/element-cubes/plutonium-for-sale https://web.archive.org/web/20200904082652/https://www.lucit... says they had one of the Russian smoke detector sources for $5,000 in 2020. https://the-collectable-periodic-table2.mybigcommerce.com/plutonium-cold-war-era-detector-source/ https://the-collectable-periodic-table2.mybigcommerce.com/pl... has it listed (well, "wish listed") for $500.
looofooo0 2y ago
XKCD-Comic: Periodic Wall of Elements https://englishatlc.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/randall-munroe-periodic-wall-of-elements.pdf https://englishatlc.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/randall-m...
renewiltord 2y ago
Listen, if you’re in a police state being open and honest is an idiot’s choice.
bigbacaloa 2y ago
[dead]

189 points by geox 2y ago

I’ve seen ads for buying small quantities of elements including selling a full periodic table. We probably all have. I wonder how many of us on HN could have been in this poor guy’s position. The writeup makes it sounds typically Australian in a massive law enforcement overreaction over something innocent and minimal.

jjk166 2y ago
Beyond a person's life being turned upside down, one also has to wonder how much this investigation and "major hazmat incident" cost taxpayers.
- johnsmth 2y ago
  Would have been easier too, just to send a car to the kid's house to knock on the door. Here in the US cops would do it for the PR, sometimes.
  - Canada 2y ago
    They could have just kept it at customs and sent a letter saying it's illegal and let that be the end of it. Whoever was involved in creating a circus out of it should be fired.
    - rl3 2y ago
      Thank you, Canada. Your position is common sense and level-headed.
    - ptsneves 2y ago
      When you say it like that it is so obvious. If we collectively kept our heads out of our asses and just thought how to deescalate things rather than be parsimonious little nobodies we would all be better. The other day somebody said I could not join a huge table in a coworking space because there was a meeting. Private meeting tables or rooms are paid and require reservation and that table was in the common area. I got annoyed because the guy did not ask if I could wait and go to another table, instead he just matter of fact told me they were having a meeting and would rather I would not sit in the free seats. I told him that I believe this was a public usage table, to which he then asked if I could allow them to remain alone. I considered being a prick but then I considered, what would be the gain of antagonising a dude that also goes there often and all for the pleasure of sitting in my favourite table? I stewed a bit but the next day I forgot it. If I had confronted him I would be reminded of the incident every time I crossed the guys path.
- bigfatkitten 2y ago
  In Australia, most major criminal matters are handled at the state level. The Commonwealth Director of Prosecutions has form for this. They don't do much other than welfare fraud cases, and so when they get a brief that's actually interesting for a change, they tend to go full ham. Whether it's actually in the public interest for them to prosecute isn't a factor they seem to give much consideration. Another recent fiasco caused by their heavy handedness: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/aug/11/afp-counter-terrorism-operation-that-targeted-13-year-old-with-autism-cost-more-than-500000 https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/aug/...
  - trhway 2y ago
    >Another recent fiasco caused by their heavy handedness: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/aug/ https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/aug/... "He spent three months in custody before he was granted bail in October 2022, after an earlier bail was revoked because he failed to comply with conditions." a 13 year old with autism "failed to comply with conditions".
    - mrkeen 2y ago
      That kid stated he tried to contact ISIS, had pledged allegiance to the current ISIS leader, expressed a desire to be an ISIS recruiter, and to build and detonate a bomb at a government building. (June 2021). It looks like he was searched on 6 October 2021 and granted bail on 8 October. I don't know what the conditions of his bail were, but when it was revoked in June 2022, his Google searches involved topics such as “10 ways to cover up a murder”, “how to murder”, “16 steps to kill someone and not get caught” and references to a schoolteacher. https://www.childrenscourt.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2024-01/Application%20for%20bail%20by%20Carrick%20%28a%20pseudonym%29%20%5B2022%5D%20VChC%204.pdf
      - nukem222 2y ago
        Damn, why didn't they prosecute that instead? Probably would have won some public support. Declarations of a desire to commit violence are an entirely different beast than purchasing plutonium, and far more worth prosecuting.
SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
Such ads are common for uranium, which is less dangerous and thus less restricted. Plutonium is extremely illegal and not included in any periodic table collection I've ever seen.
- windhaven 2y ago
  From the collections of elements that I’ve seen, they’d likely include some uranium in that slot, with a note that there’s a chance of trace amounts of plutonium present from natural decay.

d_silin 2y ago

I wonder where one can even order plutonium online? I am aware of legal way to buy some uranium, but that's within US only.

dghlsakjg 2y ago
This claims to have plutonium https://engineeredlabs.com/products/plutonium-element-cube-trinitite-sample https://engineeredlabs.com/products/plutonium-element-cube-t.... Although other studies of trinitite have failed to find any. It also appears that the soviets used plutonium in fire detectors, and that people were selling these sources at one point https://www.luciteria.com/element-cubes/plutonium-for-sale https://www.luciteria.com/element-cubes/plutonium-for-sale
- White_Wolf 2y ago
  you could buy the ones with Americium in most of the EU and US too. I think you can still find some, here and there.
  - londons_explore 2y ago
    You can still buy Americium detectors. They're more reliable because they don't stop working when a little dust gets in them like optical sensors.
themaninthedark 2y ago
Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/elementcollection/comments/mf5v0u/in_the_market_for_some_americium_neptunium_or/ https://www.reddit.com/r/elementcollection/comments/mf5v0u/i...) says that you were able to get some here: https://www.luciteria.com/elements-for-sale https://www.luciteria.com/elements-for-sale but I didn't see it listed. edit: found it but discontinued... https://www.luciteria.com/element-cubes/plutonium-for-sale https://www.luciteria.com/element-cubes/plutonium-for-sale
kotaKat 2y ago
I was going to guess United Nuclear myself but that was the uranium supplier ;)

puppycodes 2y ago

Small uranium samples are very often used to test geiger counters and is pretty common and not dangerous unless it becomes dust. Even then a far cry from anything massively concerning. in terms of spicy rocks doesnt the specific plutonium(number) make a massive difference?

kragen 2y ago
Not really.
- CrossVR 2y ago
  Given that this guy was charged under a non-proliferation act it makes a massive difference whether it's Pu-238 or Pu-239.
  - kragen 2y ago
    Why, because one has a critical mass of 9-10 kg and the other has a critical mass of 11 kg? You'd think it would matter a great deal more that the amount he obtained was apparently 35 nanograms, so he was about a hundred million samples short of a working reactor.
    - perihelions 2y ago
      Pu-238 isn't usably fissile for weapons purposes (and apparently[0] isn't regulated as such (?)). Just look at the hero image on its Wikipedia entry[1]. A critical mass would have >5 kW of decay heat. [0] https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/part071/part071-0004.html https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/part071/p... ("Fissile material means the radionuclides uranium-233, uranium-235, plutonium-239, and plutonium-241") [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-238 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-238 ("Plutonium-238 oxide pellet glowing from its decay heat") https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General-purpose_heat_source#Stages_of_assembly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General-purpose_heat_source#St...
      - 2y ago

rdtsc 2y ago

> Lidden pleaded guilty to offences under Australia's nuclear non-proliferation act that carry a possible 10-year jail sentence. The bureaucratic apparatus, especially dealing with law enforcement always concentrates people who enjoy punishing others. Is Australia particularly bad about it perhaps? It seems they get some kind of sadistic enjoyment out of it. It's scary that everyone in the chain here: judge Leonie Flannery, Australian Border Force officials, police, even his employer just had a grand 'ol time punishing this guy. Everyone could have stopped, realizing it's obvious what's happening, give him a warning have him turn in this sample. And the best part for them, there is no repercussion for it. Everyone can turn around and publicly proclaim they just "did their job".

logicchains 2y ago
>Is Australia particularly bad about it perhaps I'm an Australian, and Australia is absolutely terrible in this regard. There's a saying: the problem with Australia isn't that it was founded by prisoners, it's that it was founded by prison guards. I've lived in quite a few countries and never found anywhere with as many smug and self-righteous people as back home. There used to be two kinds of Australia: the larrikin (fun loving, prankster) Australia, and the wowser (fun hating) Australia, but in recent years the wowsers have thoroughly won.
- Larrikin 2y ago
  Hopefully they make a come back
- alabastervlog 2y ago
  > larrikin This has become a kind of stock character (or, at least, a stock archetype for characters) in Australian media, and can be seen in lots of e.g. Australian or heavily Australian-influenced films, often portrayed in a basically-positive, if imperfect, light. This sort of attitude toward life and behavior is on display among several characters in the Peter Weir film Gallipoli, for instance, including and especially Mel Gibson's. In that film, the wowser-est folks are mostly British, because national myth-making :-)
- 2y ago

tristor 2y ago

The behaviors demonstrated by Lidden here in the article sound to me like classic autistic behaviors. Is there any protection under the law in Australia for the fact that he's acting out an obsession tied to his "personality disorder"? Obsessive collecting, the interest in trains, and ultimately an overabundance of honesty and trying to rigidly follow rules to his own detriment, the court system should also be looking out for him as a defendant and not furthering this travesty of justice.

mmooss 2y ago
> overabundance of honesty I don't agree with that part. The immediate cost will be outweighed, I expect, by the impact on the judge; possibly, if Lidden isn't jailed, on the employer who will remember that Lidden was so honest under pressure and at personal cost; and on everyone around Lidden for the rest of their life, having earned trust that few of us have.
- tristor 2y ago
  I really really really wish that this is true, unfortunately it very often isn't. The Just World Fallacy is something I wish were not a fallacy.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    Save the nonsense characterizations and dismissals. What actual evidence do you have? In my experience, that's how things work - not 100% but it's a powerful effect.
    - tristor 2y ago
      Evidence of what? That Lidden is autistic? None, other than the contents of the article and my own knowledge of those traits (that I myself have). That the Just World Fallacy is strong and we all get kicked in the pants because of our better expectations? My evidence is a good 40-50% of my entire life's story, where I have been punished repeatedly for doing the right thing. To be clear, I am not being dismissive of your comment. I wish very deeply that it were true, and that I am wrong. Unfortunately I don't believe that to be the case.

mmooss 2y ago

Does anyone know how much plutonium and how enriched? (I assume it's not pure plutonium, which I think would be more pure than 'weapons grade'?)

philipkglass 2y ago
According to the Luciteria listing linked by other commenters, this was a microscopic sample of plutonium, as plutonium oxide, enclosed as part of an old Soviet smoke detector. It's like the radioactive americium source used in modern smoke detectors but made with an element one atomic number lower. A plutonium bomb core requires a mass of several kilograms. This sample was 35 nanograms, or about 11 orders of magnitude away from being a nuclear weapons proliferation risk. The authorities might as well accuse someone of running a biological warfare program for having bacteria on their house's doorknobs. In addition to the minute quantity, this analysis of a Soviet smoke detector source shows that the plutonium was mixed isotopes, containing only about 73% Pu-239: https://carlwillis.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/analysis-of-soviet-smoke-detector-plutonium/ https://carlwillis.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/analysis-of-sovi... It is not weapons grade plutonium, though it is higher in Pu-239 than plutonium from modern spent reactor fuel.
- ThinkBeat 2y ago
  All an evil doer has to do then is order a veritable mountain of samples and lump them all together once he has enough. </s>
- mmooss 2y ago
  > Luciteria listing Did they buy it from Luciteria? This article doesn't say.

IshKebab 2y ago

Shame on his employer for firing him. That's probably the shittiest behaviour here (which is saying something).

bawolff 2y ago
Indeed. Does australia not have laws against wrongful termination?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- denkmoon 2y ago
  We have (had?) good employee protections but these have been degraded over time especially in the lower end of the job market. The train union is fairly powerful, if he had completed his training the termination probably wouldn't have happened but trainees get less protections. This poor bugger has only done "the right thing" at every stage and has been completely screwed for it. Shameful. Makes me ashamed to live here.
GolDDranks 2y ago
Yeah "They terminated him for lack of transparency and honesty", which is ridiculous since the opposite was the case. (He was being transparent and honest towards his employer that he is being investigated.)

thih9 2y ago

> border force officials had engaged in duplicitous and unfair conduct by returning some of the material to Lidden after initially seizing it What was the reasoning here - why was the material returned? I assume this would happen in some exceptional scenario and the default behavior would be to seize it. Is it not the case?

ungreased0675 2y ago

What shameful behavior by the government. Let the man have his hobby.

perihelions 2y ago

If Theodore Gray (the eccentric millionaire co-founder of Wolfram) doesn't have a plutonium sample in his famous periodic table, I really doubt there's any available for sale in the US, outside of NRC-regulated places. He'd had found one by now, if one existed. Is it possible someone confused plutonium with polonium? That's the Occam's razor here.

gjsman-1000 2y ago
Apparently this was the offending Plutonium purchase. https://www.luciteria.com/element-cubes/plutonium-for-sale?srsltid=AfmBOoo5jE4XtGHbjpsQJSPgZ4FHlVh60CME-cbJPs1cuBf5S8AWsYfk https://www.luciteria.com/element-cubes/plutonium-for-sale?s...
- perihelions 2y ago
  I'll be eating my hat, then; this thing is indeed real, https://carlwillis.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/analysis-of-soviet-smoke-detector-plutonium/ https://carlwillis.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/analysis-of-sovi... ("Analysis of Soviet smoke detector plutonium" (2017)) (and HN thread, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13616574 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13616574 ) That analysis says these contained about 40 μCi of Pu-239, or 0.7 mg.
- mmooss 2y ago
  How do we know?

SoftTalker 2y ago

Reminds me of the Nuclear Boy Scout story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn

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mmmlinux 2y ago
Honestly no. That guy was fucking around and found out in the end. This guy ordered something that was basically supposed to be a novelty for collecting purposes and has been fucked for it.

dynm 2y ago

Fun fact: Americans are seemingly allowed to own up to 1.5 kg of yellowcake. (That's pure uranium, refined from uranium ore, but not enriched to extract the 0.7% U-235 from the 99.3% U-238.) Citation: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/part040/part040-0022.html https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/part040/p...

leblancfg 2y ago
According to that link that's for dispersible form (gas, powder) – it's up to 7kg in solid form ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
ninalanyon 2y ago
> That's pure uranium, Not exactly. Yellowcake is about 80% uranium oxide: "Triuranium octoxide (U3O8), the most stable uranium oxide; yellowcake typically contains 70 to 90 percent triuranium octoxide)" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_oxide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_oxide
- GauntletWizard 2y ago
  The atomic weight of Uranium is 238; the atomic weight of Oxygen is 16. By weight, Triuranium octoxide is ~84% Uranium. Even if you're only counting the uranium in the Triuranium octoxide, that's still 60+% of the total mass coming from Uranium Atoms. I'd take that purity any day.
  - justatdotin 2y ago
    purity invites gradation; 'pure' does not.
01100011 2y ago
United Nuclear has it for sale. No more dangerous than ore samples unless you cut a line and snort it.
- throwaway743 2y ago

palmotea 2y ago

> Lidden ordered the [plutonium] from a US-based science website and they were delivered to his parents' home. So private ownership of plutonium is legal in the US, or is that site about to get shut down?

giantg2 2y ago
Technically, I think it would get shutdown. Plutonium, U-235, and some other stuff requires special approval to own. But it's possible that if it's not pure and was part of a product, that it might be overlooked. There's probably a few nanograms of Plutonium in the legally allowed Uranium samples that you can own.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 2y ago
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perihelions 2y ago
I think small test sources are exempt, https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/part071/part071-0015.html https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/part071/p... ("[10 CFR] §71.15 Exemption from classification as fissile material")

FpUser 2y ago

Sadistic police state masquerading as something else since they have elections.

AngryData 2y ago

Outlawing tiny samples of specific elements is so ridiculous. Whats he gunna do with it, nuke a small ant hill with it? Make a neat spectrograph of it?

colechristensen 2y ago
The median lethal dose of Polonium-210 is about 50 nanograms. (1 twenty millionth of a gram) 30 mg of plutonium administered properly is fatal. Much less will give you a significant increased risk for cancer. These things are dangerous in any quantity and no amount of enthusiasm overrides the risk when it comes to writing laws.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- atomicnumber3 2y ago
  1lb of hammer administered properly is also fatal and I can buy that at the store. EDIT: this also appears to be 30 nanograms, not mg.
- achierius 2y ago
  You can buy bleach at the store, but if you drink a mouthful of it you're probably toast. We don't ban things just because they kill you when you eat them.
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    To say nothing of the fact that if you accidentally mix a bit with ammonia, which is extremely easy to do because they are both used in cleaning, you just created a deadly chemical weapon that is also a gas. The world would be much better, even if perhaps a bit 'scarier', if people treated each other like adults.
- cyberax 2y ago
  You can buy a polonium anti-static brush for photofilm cleaning, with about 1 millicurie (~250 nanograms) of polonium. Absolutely legally: https://amstat.com/products/anti-static-brush-with-ionizing-cartridge-1.html https://amstat.com/products/anti-static-brush-with-ionizing-...

mordymoop 2y ago

Disparaging the boot is a bootable offense.

xeckr 2y ago

One reads this kind of story and simply wants to weep.

aussieguy1234 2y ago

And this is the biggest weakness of the current top down model of governance that we have. Id like to see a system where judging those who have supposedly done wrong is done almost entirely by the community, not the government. Government/security forces (including police) intervention should be a last resort. The law has little gaps like this where someone well meaning who is not intending to break a law inadvertently does so. Minorities tend to have the law applied to them more harshly. Not everyone has safe access to the legal system, i.e. undocumented migrants. If you are in a marginalised group and have a crime committed against you, your experience will likely be different compared to what a white heterosexual christian male would experience.

ciabattabread 2y ago
> Id like to see a system where judging those who have supposedly done wrong is done almost entirely by the community, not the government. Government/security forces (including police) intervention should be a last resort. I'm sure all those children abused by priests will agree with you.
- aussieguy1234 2y ago
  What if the abuse can't be 100% proven but you have multiple victims? In this type of case, the perp gets away with it alot of the time. However...if judged by the community, its highly unlikely that they would get away with it. The law fails victims of all kinds of sexual abuse all the time, to the point where most perpetrators get away with it. Gaps the legal system let some paedophile priests get away with it and also lead to unjust prosecutions like we see in the article.
jdsully 2y ago
That's basically the entire premise behind a jury trial.
- aussieguy1234 2y ago
  Well that's the intent anyway. In reality, the jury has to follow the law as written and there are gaps with various consequences. If they try to make some ruling outside of the law, it would just get appealed and oveturned.

kbutler 2y ago

> Lidden ordered the [plutonium] from a US-based science website and they were delivered to his parents' home. Anybody have the URL? https://www.luciteria.com/element-cubes/plutonium-for-sale?srsltid=AfmBOoqCdoAaBmfMtdNYsDtDhxjd93tRheVrRFDWGsqC61FW-xVs8UmF https://www.luciteria.com/element-cubes/plutonium-for-sale?s... says "sold out" https://web.archive.org/web/20200904082652/https://www.luciteria.com/element-cubes/plutonium-for-sale https://web.archive.org/web/20200904082652/https://www.lucit... says they had one of the Russian smoke detector sources for $5,000 in 2020. https://the-collectable-periodic-table2.mybigcommerce.com/plutonium-cold-war-era-detector-source/ https://the-collectable-periodic-table2.mybigcommerce.com/pl... has it listed (well, "wish listed") for $500.

looofooo0 2y ago

XKCD-Comic: Periodic Wall of Elements https://englishatlc.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/randall-munroe-periodic-wall-of-elements.pdf https://englishatlc.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/randall-m...

renewiltord 2y ago

Listen, if you’re in a police state being open and honest is an idiot’s choice.

bigbacaloa 2y ago

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