Australian who ordered radioactive materials walks away from court
chemistryworld.com334 points by mrkeen 13 days ago
334 points by mrkeen 13 days ago
Good for him. This was an absolute ridiculous case. Lots of everyday items contain radioactive substances: old smoke detectors, uranium glass, old watches with radium dials, anti-static brushes, the list goes on and on. As a side note: coal power plants put quite a bit of radiation into the environment (technically 100x more than nuclear plants, if you sidestep the issue of waste), because coal contains Uranium and Thorium.
The amounts of Pu that were imported were not only minuscule, but also embedded in acrylic for display. As an alpha radiator, this is 100% safe to have and put on a shelf. You would have to completely dismantle it, crush the few μg of Pu into dust and then inhale it to be dangerous to your health.
I understand that people are afraid of radiation. I am too. However, it is important to know that radiation is everywhere all the time, and it is always about the dose. At the same time, we allow for instance cars to pollute the environment with toxic particulates that lead to many cancers, and somehow we accept this as unavoidable. But I digress...
For those interested, here's a video from "Explosions and Fire" on this issue, a channel I highly recommend anyway, this guy is hilarious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0JGsSxBd2I
To be clear this literally was an old smoke detector. Not even kidding.
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/06/a-tale-of-nuclear-shenanigan...
He ordered an old smoke detector online as part of his collection of elements. This contained, as pretty much all old smoke detectors once did, radioactive elements. In minute quantities.
It gets worse the more you look into this too. The hazmat crew that closed off his street? Days earlier they let the courier deliver his old soviet smoke detector in person, no protective gear. As in they knew it wasn't dangerous but put on theater to make a better case for prosecution.
This is the kind of implicit lying that seems pervasive today and I am so tired of it.
This alone is sufficient evidence of their malicious intent and should be enough to punish the people responsible for trying to ruin an innocent person's life.
But it's not gonna happen because the law is not written to punish people using it maliciously against others and most people simply won't care anyway.
I believe this behaviour is normalized in prosecution. Accusing someone or a crime? Raid their kitchen and bag every knife as a weapon and every household chemical as explosive precursors to get the jury on your side.
Think of organizations as a kind of AI. A prosecutorial organization can take on a so-called "paperclip maximizing" dysfunction just like a standard AI. Converts the whole world to paperclips.
The solution actually is to gate the specialist AI's through a generalist process. That's what court is supposed to be, but court is less effective in the modern world.
I really like this framing. It also reinforces my opinion that the thing most like the proverbial AI that turns the entire world into paperclips by far humans. It's a bit fascinating if you look at it from a psychological / mythopoeic point of view: are villains _always_ the evil part of ourselves, even when they're not human?
Australia is so ridiculous they closed airspace to fire a 50 BMG sniper rifle
For context these rounds are fired everywhere in America daily thousand of times.
they should be punished 10x more severely than they were trying to do to him
A do believe causing harm without justification should automatically result in punishment that causes the same harm to the abuser multiplied by a multiplicative constant but 10x is probably too much. Usually, I'd suggest something between 1.5 and 2.
He was facing 10 years IIRC, giving them 15 seems reasonable.
This constant should increase with repeated abuse so people who are habitual offenders get effectively removed from society.
Some countries already have something similar, like the 3 strikes law, but that has issues with discontinuity (the 3rd offense is sometimes punished too severely if minor). I'd prefer a continuous system, ideally one that is based on actual harm.
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We also need mechanisms where civil servants (or anybody else, really) can challenge any law on the basis of being stupid. If the law is written so that it prohibits any amount (or an amount so small that it is harmless, even if he imported dozens of these samples), it is stupid and should be removed.
"actual harm" is insane.
if a psycho run to stab someone, but a car blinks in his face as the knife is just about to hit his victim, causing him to miss and hit only the arm, why should he get a discount?
That was a figure of speech.
It should probably be something like `max("harm caused adjusted by level of intent", "harm intended")`.
> This is the kind of implicit lying that seems pervasive today and I am so tired of it.
I am so tired of it, too. Toying with the legal boundary of lying in communication is pathological, maybe even sociopathic.
Everyone knows when someone is doing it, too. We just don’t have the means to punish it, even in the courts.
The whole “I won’t get punished so I’m doing all the immoral things” habit is foul to begin with. I don’t know how, but I hope our society can get over it. As things stand, there is no way to outlaw being an asshole.
There are glimmers of hope - like Wales trying to ban lying in politics. But of course, the punishment has to be proportional to the offense, not just a slap on the wrist.
If I wanted to take things to an extreme, I'd ask why laws even need to be so specific about which offenses lead to which punishments and which offenses are even punishable in the first place (the "what is not forbidden is allowed" principle).
In theory, you could cover them more generally by saying that any time someone intentionally causes harm to others (without a valid reason), he will be caused proportional harm in return. Then all you need is a conversion table to prison time, fines, etc.
With lying, all you would need to prove is that the person lied intentionally and quantify the expected harm which would have been caused if the lie was successful (regardless if it actually was or not - intent is what matters).
As a bonus, it would force everyone to acknowledge the full amount of harm caused. For example, rape usually leads to lifelong consequences for the victim but not the attacker. In this system, such inconsistency, some would call it injustice, would be obvious and it would be much easier for anyone to call for rectification.
"without a valid reason" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Not only would this idea be impractical and highly subjective, determining what a valid reason is, is the same problem as defining the Law in the first place.
Can you insult someone? Can you say something wrong that you thought was right ("the lion cage is locked") that someone is injured from? What is their duties in checking the info they get is correct? Is there a min wage or not? What value is it? Does it change on city or state? Can under-age people sign contracts? Can they vote?
Obviously we need the law in any practical world.
I never said we didn't need rules, just that when they are too specific, people tend to follow the letter but break the spirit of the rule.
(Sidenote, one deeply ingrained idea is that the law is somehow special compared to other rules. The only real difference is that the law is enforced by violence while other rules are not.)
I was also talking about criminal law so the questions about minimum wage, contracts and voting are irrelevant regardless if you want specific or general rules about punishments.
You don't have to lie to tell a lie. The media have honed well this skill over decades.
"Coffee study found that it TRIPLES, your chance of developing a terrifying form of colon cancer! A 300% increase!"
In reality the study had a sample size of 10 and the odds were for an extremely rare form of lung cancer you have a 0.0003% chance of developing anyway. But now most readers go tell their co-workers "they did a study and found that coffee actually gives you colon cancer".
Lying by omission is still lying.
What I've noticed is that for a lot of people, if you do something wrong through a sufficient number of steps, they feel like the severity is lower.
The opposite is in fact true - causing harm through multiple steps shows intent and the severity is in fact higher.
If a journalist doesn't understand statistical significance, he is either incompetent or malicious. Either way he needs to be removed from his little position of power and if the incompetence is sufficient or the malice proven, he needs to be punished.
Rather the laws exist so they have to work hard to lie then the current free for all allowing outright deception and lying
Ban lying in politics?
What would be left?
Apathetic voters who'll still vote for a terrible party just because they hate the same people the politicians say they do?
MIB put it so succinctly, large groups of humans are exceedingly dumb. It's almost like our individual intelligence drops, perhaps we evolved those effects from tribalism so that organising larger groups was more effective. And perhaps that effect is broken now that we organise in much larger groups than we ever evolved for.
"A bad plan now is better than a good plan later."
People have evolved to unify behind a strong (and aggressive) leader because historically the biggest threat to one's tribe (and therefore genes) were other tribes. You might not be in the right but it doesn't matter to evolution, what matters is that you kill the people trying to kill you, regardless of who started is.
This primitive drive is why every time the going gets tough, people elect charismatic and abusive leaders - because their lizard brain wants to fight an external enemy and abusers are good at giving people that enemy (Jews for Hitler, immigrants and gays and anybody who is slightly different for Trump, ...).
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The issue is that for most of our evolution, such a leader could units hundreds, maybe thousands of people and if a tribe behaved aggressively and unjustly towards its neighbors, those neighbors would units against it and "keep it in check" (which is a euphemism for fighting and killing them).
But these days you have 3 superpowers, 2 of which are dictatorships and the 3rd is on track to become one. There is nobody to keep them in check.
Oh and the abusers have nukes now.
Yup, shit's fucked, totally agree.
Imo either the machines need to babysit us or we genetically engineer the evolved bullshit out of our brains. I prefer the machines option personally.
> There are glimmers of hope - like Wales trying to ban lying in politics
Lol. Give me a break. This is like all the "combat disinformation" bullshit. You claim something is a lie or disinformation because your government appointed expert said so and jail someone. When years later it's undeniable that you were the one lying you said "we did the best with what we had at the Time".
Naive solutions only give more power to those in power and are abused routinely.
Obviously all available tools will by used by bad people. What we need is:
1) Good people to also use those tools - a lot of self-proclaimed good people think some tools are bad and therefore they won't use them. But tools are just tools, what makes it good or bad is who you use it against / for what reason.
A simple example is killing. Many people will have a knee-jerk reaction and say it's always bad. And they you start asking them questions and they begrudgingly admit that it's OK in self defense. And then you ask more questions and you come up a bunch of examples where logically it's the right tool to use but it's outside of the Overton window for them to admit it.
A good way to reveal people's true morality is movies. People will cheer for the good guys taking revenge, killing a rapist, overthrowing a corrupt government, etc. Because they naturally understand those things to be right, they've just been conditioned to not say it.
2) When bad people hurt someone using a tool, we need the tool to backfire when caught.
Obviously, to jail someone, the lying needs to be proven "beyond reasonable doubt" - i.e. Blackstone's ratio. Oh and no government appointed experts who get to dictate the truth. If the truth is not known with sufficient certainty, then neither side can be punished.
This threshold should be sufficient so that if it later turns out the person was not in fact lying, the trial is reevaluated and it will show that the prosecution manipulated evidence to manipulate the judge into believing the evidence was sufficient.
Alternatively, since incentives dictate how people play the game, we can decide that 10:1 is an acceptable error ratio and automatically punish prosecutors who have an error rate higher than that and jail them for the excess time.
So yes, if A jails B and it later turns out this was done through either sufficient incompetence or malice, then A should face the same punishment.
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I am sure given more time, we can come up with less "naive" and more reliable systems. What we know for sure is that the current system is not working - polarization is rising, anti-social disorders are more common, inequality is rising, censorship in the west increased massively in the last few years, etc.
So either we come up with ways to reverse the trend or it will keep getting worse until it reaches some threshold above which society will rapidly and violently change (either more countries fall into authoritarianism or civil war erupts, neither of which is desirable).
Just because something doesn't work doesn't mean anything you propose will be better. That's how we get security theater or worse, the war on drugs.
> So either we come up with ways to reverse the trend or it will keep getting worse until it reaches some threshold above which society will rapidly and violently change (either more countries fall into authoritarianism or civil war erupts, neither of which is desirable
Bullshit. That's your thesis. But hey, if you want to start that violent revolution to overthrow the government do post about it here. I'm sure you'll be successful in this day and age.
Your argument contains multiple fallacies.
You first act as if the current situation is the best we can do by pretending that no alternative can be better by implying that any alternative is naive.
I attempt to be reasonable and explain in good faith.
Yet then you admit the current situation doesn't work while at the same time continue acting as if a solution is impossible by pretending any attempt at a solution is worse without actually giving any specific criticisms.
On top, you:
1) (Probably intentionally) misrepresent what I said - I never said I wanted a violent revolution, I warn about it.
2) Mock me.
EDIT: Oh and I just noticed you attacked another commenter for absolutely no reason[0]. I would very much like to understand your goals because without further explanation, just going by your behavior here, they seem diametrically opposed to a better society for no valid reason.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43814782
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If you have a constructive argument to make, I encourage you to do so.
We are not playing werewolf in a forum. Your wall of text won't get read.
Your argument was naive. I addressed it, you went on a tangent. You want fallacies? Ad hominem + appeal to emotion.
The fact that you just went to my username for more dirt proves you don't have much to say. Stop the fake niceties and jog on with your bs.
> won't get read
> responds to said wall of text
Saying any more is a waste of time. Bye.
You do realize laws like this already exist in America? Slander and defamation are laws against lying
I fully support banning politics and the media from lying because they should be held to a higher standard
That's an unfortunate example, as defamation is notoriously difficult to prosecute as it requires proof of knowledge and intent, among other things.
The problem lies in how such a law can be used; unless the law is weak it will likely be abused (but then its effectiveness will also be minimal).
The issue with many laws is that they take into account the individual case.
If somebody has a track record of lying, it should be easier to prove subsequent lying.
Of course, then the potential for abuse is greater. It's about finding the right balance.
Um but smoke detectors don't contain plutonium. Usually americum 241.
Edit: ah so it was a soviet one. They also played loose and fast with nuclear safety. We still have 30+ nuclear reactors hanging over our heads in space that will come down one day. One already did and contaminated a big area in Canada, though luckily a very remote one.
Plutonium from soviet smoke detectors is a common item for the element collectors subreddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/elementcollection/comments/w557i6/2...
- "We still have 30+ nuclear reactors hanging over our heads in space that will come down one day."
To be fair that's multiple centuries away, so there won't be very much radiation left. And since they were relatively low-power reactors, there wasn't that much to begin with.
It is but these reactors use U235 which has a half-life of 700 million years. So yeah they will still be pretty much radioactive when they come down. Also, the decay products tend to be radioactive too and have their own half lives on top of that.
one good shove with a sattelite designed to sweep orbits free, will put one down. this could happen tomorrow, evil willing.
You think if someone was evil and willing, they’d design and launch a satellite designed to seek out another satellite and take it out of orbit in a way that causes it to drop randomly into the atmosphere?
All this instead of simply launching a satellite that does what they want? Or skipping the satellite and doing it with terrestrial solutions?
Some people’s threat models are very upside down.
its already in place, it only requires abuse for it to happen.
Yes, but if you are willing to be malicious, there are far easier ways to get the same outcome.
A good shove being about 250m/s of delta v? Perhaps more to be certain of where you’re landing. Not exactly trivial or stealthy.
Why not just load up some nuclear waste on your “shoving device” and launch that exactly where you want?
kudos for the thinking cap--
its all up there already, all you need is access, haxd or authd, and you have a dirty bomb from orbit, and the requirement to orient to the threat.
and it could be done more than once if the killer satellite survives
That’s the problem. It’s up there. Getting it down requires you to get something of significant mass up there to provide that delta v to deorbit it, and even then you’re not entirely sure exactly where it will land. You could probably target a large country, but not a city.
Instead use all that feta v you need to get your “shoving device” and just send it direct.
To deorbit one of those satellites you need an icbm capability already
Not really. If the killer satellite is in an orbit for one maneuver it will be far from a suitable orbit for a different target.
Delta-v is hard.
I’m surprised you know this but didn’t think further about the situation.
Where was anericum used in smoke detectors, and was there perhaps some other region where plutonium was used?
Perhaps somewhere colder, more, soviet-ey?
I don't have much knowledge of soviet society, that's why. Just their cavalier attitude to nuclear safety.
Though to be fair, America wasn't much better in the 50s. Nor was Britain if you read about the "procedures" surrounding the windscale meltdown. Uranium rods would get stuck and people would just poke it with a stick.
The smoke detector in question was created in 70s.
I know but the Soviets continued their attitude until much later, when the Americans had already 'grown up' in terms of nuclear safety.
back in the 50s "fire" detectors had a block of uranium and a vacuum tube to detect smoke or ionized combustive particles
He didn't really walk away:
"A 24-year-old Australian man who ordered uranium and plutonium to his parents’ apartment has been allowed to walk away from court on a two-year good behaviour bond.
After ordering various radioactive samples over the internet in an effort to collect the entire periodic table, Emmanuel Lidden pleaded guilty to two charges: moving nuclear material into Australia and possessing nuclear material without a permit.
While his actions were criminal, the judge concluded that Lidden had mental health issues and displayed no malicious intent"
The court established he had mental helath issues and has 2 years probation basically.
"Mental health issues" sounds like both a fig leaf for the prosecution and a last-ditch smear of the man involved. Now he's stuck being publicly associated not just with "criminal", but "criminal with mental health issues".
> "Mental health issues" sounds like both a fig leaf for the prosecution and a last-ditch smear of the man involved.
Mental health issues shouldn't be seen as a smear though – is it a smear if someone has physical health issues (who doesn't, at least from time-to-time?)
A recent study carried out on behalf of the Australian government estimated that 43% of Australians aged 18-to-65 had experienced mental illness at some time in their lives, and 22% at some time in the last 12 months.
The same study estimates that in the 12 months prior to the study, 17% of Australians had an anxiety disorder, 8% an affective disorder (depression or bipolar), 3% a substance use disorder.
https://www.aihw.gov.au/mental-health/overview/prevalence-an...
It shouldn't be, but it is.
No doubt to some people it is, but to a lot of people it isn’t. It isn’t a smear to me, nor to many people I know.
This is entirely missing the point. Until more or less everybody shares this opinion, being publicly labeled as such will still have adverse effects.
You can say the same about a lot of other things, e.g. being divorced, being in a same-sex relationship, being adopted: somebody out there will judge you negatively for it, but fearing their judgement is part of what gives it power.
The stigma for mental issues is still a lot more severe than sexuality etc, and the court knows they can do it without consequences. Mental health issues are often viewed as a moral failing or a weakness of a person who can't get their life sorted out, a bit like how people are judged for laziness. Very easy to stick to a "criminal" without anyone batting an eye.
If the judge instead said "this guy's not that bad, he's just gay" it wouldn't go over so well.
The mental health evidence is introduced by the defence, not the prosecution. In most cases, the prosecution has no interest in raising defendant’s alleged mental heath issues (since it may well result in a lighter sentence, in more extreme cases even be grounds for an acquittal), while the interests of the defence is obvious.
And if the defence introduces mental health evidence into the sentencing, the judge is legally obliged to rule on it - explaining whether it was accepted or not, and if it was, how big an impact it had on the sentencing decision-if the judge didn’t do that, they risk either party successfully appealing the sentence, in extreme cases even being disciplined.
And even if it is a “plea deal” - the sentencing procedure is fundamentally the same as if there isn’t one, it is just the prosecution commits not to ask for a harsher sentence than agreed, the defence still has to introduce mitigating evidence and the judge has to rule on it; if the defence doesn’t, there’s a risk the judge may decide the agreed sentence is too lenient and overrule the agreement.
"Good for him. This was an absolute ridiculous case."
Absolutely so. I watched Tom's Explosions & Fire video just after he published it and as he said this prosecution was a gross overreaction by authorities. I say that as someone who once worked in nuclear safeguards/surveillance (I'm an ardent non-proliferation guy).
Living in Australia one has become to expect such incidents although this was the first one involving nuclear materials. The reasons are complex and too difficult to describe in detail here but it's a combination of poor education in tech matters, a very timid, risk averse and conservative Australian population and the fact that we've precious little high tech industries/infrastructure, concomitantly we've almost no high tech culture to speak of.
Moreover, it wasn't always like this, it has gotten worse over the years. For instance, when I was at school quite some decades ago we had samples of metallic uranium and some small amounts of other radioactive materials to do physics experiments with. Today, the mere thought of that would send shivers down the backs of educators and most of the population.
Such high levels of timidy and concern are not just limited to radioactive materials, the same concern applies to chemicals well and above that necessary to protect public safety—for instance, the state where I live has now banned fireworks (and that's just for starters).
That has ramifications past just safety considerations, one of the reasons I became interested in chemistry was fireworks and that we leaned to make black powder in highschool chemistry and actually got to test it (today, even that's banned in our school system). Similarly, we've even produced a generation of kids and young adults who've never seen liquid mercury.
Let no one say I'm against safety as I'm particularly careful around dangerous substances. That said, you can have both in a well regulated environment and with a well educated population.
Without hands-on experience, Australia is deskilling its population and tragically this unfortunate prosecution is testament to that.
Superstition and witch-burning are natural human behaviors. Philosophy has always required a ceaseless struggle against them. William Kamkwamba was nearly lynched by his neighbors for building a windmill.
Thanks for the info, I wasn't aware of the fact. BTW, I've always thought civilization is only one step removed from superstition and witch-burning if but not for the fact of education.
> a very timid, risk averse and conservative Australian population
That is completely wrong [1].
That film was made about 40 years ago and even then the Dundee character was a dying breed and only found in pockets of Australian society—those parts where life was hard and day-to-day activities were hands-on with the physical world (like those portrayed in the film).
Even in the '80s most Australians wouldn't have lived and worked like that, these days much less so. Most Australians live in a highly urbanized city environment and many of them live in high-rise buildings without even a backyard. Moreover, nowadays, they mostly work in the service industries such as banking, finance, tourism and retail. Put simply, a reasonable percentage would hardly know one end of a screwdriver from another let alone perform manual labour or know how to ride a horse, or use a lathe or milling machine.
That may sound harsh but having lived through that time (I was an adult when the film was released) I reckon that's a reasonable assessment. You also need to keep in mind that Australia has essentially killed off its manufacturing industries over that time with China being the beneficiary. Thus, Australian society has lost many of those hands-on, down-to-earth skills it had at the end of WWII through to the end of the 1960s. Today's Australian society is nothing like it was when I was growing up, I now live in a totally different world.
BTW, what made Paul Hogan (Dundee) so suitable for the film's character was that he is one of that dying breed of hardworking ruffians and was so before he became an actor, his persona was essentially behind the making of the film. He came from the rough outback opal mining town of Lightning Ridge and then worked as a rigger on the Sydney Harbour Bridge—a very dangerous job that required working at hundreds of feet in the air—those with the slightest fear of heights would have been terrified, and that would include most Australians. (I can say that because in my younger days I used to work on radio and television towers—shame I can't show you photos I took from the top of them).
Agreed, this case is bananas.
If his "plutonium sample" is actually (probably) trinitite which you can just buy online [1], and if we assume an exposure of 1 uR/hr at one inch[2], then convert that to BED (Banana Equivalent Dose[3] - that taken from the naturally occurring potassium-40 in bananas) that's (handwaving actual dose calculations) about, what, 1/10 of a banana?
[1] https://engineeredlabs.com/products/plutonium-element-cube-t...
[2] https://www.orau.org/health-physics-museum/collection/nuclea...
The plutonium sample is reported to be something similar to this,
https://carlwillis.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/analysis-of-sovi... ("Analysis of Soviet smoke detector plutonium" (2017))
I believe it was this https://www.luciteria.com/element-cubes/plutonium-for-sale
Right, they're both Soviet ionization smoke detectors based on Pu-239. The Carl Willis blogpost is a teardown of one such similar item.
Oh, well if that's the case thats waaay more bananas. Like maybe around 4000.
Nobody should be eating that many bananas.
"This item is now discontinued." I wonder if this incident is the reason (or if it simply sold out in the aftermath).
The case is technically about special fissionable material (regulation of nuclear weapons)—not radiological hazards—but all your points stand. Absurd lack of common sense all around.
Well, the police also said he bought mercury, which "can be used in switches for a dirty bomb", which is such a stupid thing to say, because a mercury switch is just an old form of a tilt switch. The idea that someone would buy mercury for making his own tilt switch is just so wild, but of course, they just put this BS out there to scare people and justify their completely overblown reaction.
Mercury can also be used to make felt hats, and criminals often wear hats to disguise themselves, so it's better to be safe than sorry when it comes to Mercury.
The Mercury is also the name of a Tasmanian newspaper. Tasmanians are stereotyped as having two heads, so Tassie criminals wear 100% more disguise per disguise.
This is hat speech and should be prosecuted! Only tinfoil hats are allowed here.
There are two or three mercury switches in my house and they were all installed maybe ten years ago.
This case is almost as dumb as the Boston PD got in the couple of years after the Marathon incident. But at least they had ptsd as an excuse.
I've had several analog thermostats that use a mercury tilt switch. I assume it'd be easier to just buy an old thermostat than to make your own switch.
I mean they are still sold at your local hardware store. The bulb in the tilt switch below is the same as the mercury tilt switches that have been around for 100 years.
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Hiland-Anti-Tilt-Switch-Mechanic...
OMG that's a switch and switches are used in nuclear weapons! (lol!)
Of course this is even a step further removed. He had mercury and some tilt switches use mercury and switches are used in nuclear weapons therefore he was making a bomb!
That’s stupid as fuck as they still use mercury wetted relays to this day in some places.
I get the whole screeching about hazmat aspect to it but a mercury bulb with embedded copper contacts will cycle reliably basically forever at earthly temperatures. They are very good at what they are.
Are mercury thermometers no longer a thing? My parents had a few while I was growing up in the 80’s
I had a recollection that they were banned but it looks like the EPA convinced NIST to stop providing calibration services for mercury thermometers back in 2011.
Oh, as switch, I was thinking they were thinking that the mercury would be used in a DIY detonator. I always figured the 'dirty' bomb would need more raw materials rather than less - though the materials wouldn't need to be fissible.
As a child I bought mercury tilt switches from a tandy store (in Australia) with the intent of making a tilt game controller input for my terrible 8 bit computer (this was decades before acceleromters in game controllers). It was too laggy and had to be debounced and it sat in a box for years. Also had a collection of mineral ores in a drawer near my bed which probably included some dodgy stuff. This case was bullshit and appears to be more about agency politics than public safety.
Wait until the work out mixing household bleach and vinegar liberates free chlorine.
Chlorine can also be used as a chemical weapon.
The guy also had explosive and a triggering device in his car! It's a good thing for him police didn't seize his air-bag as evidence. (Being sarcastic.)
So if everyone in Australia ordered one of these, what would they need to do to make it into a bomb?
The Pu is from an old soviet smoke detector, containing roughly 40μg of Pu, which creates a few μCi of radiation needed for smoke detection. For fission, you need at least several kg of pure Pu239. For a "dirty bomb", any amount will do, of course.
> For a "dirty bomb", any amount will do, of course.
By that logic, one smoke detector is enough?
I probably wouldn't want to eat a smoke detector, but if one was added to a bomb I probably wouldn't be very concerned about the impact of the smoke detector.
Using that definition of dirty bomb, a firecracker inside a banana is enough. Perhaps it should include a minimal threshold, like it's enougt to kill 1 person in the linear no threshold model.
I mean, hell, a pack of cigarettes contains polonium and lead -210. And Australians smoke quite a bit, last I checked.
Not at the current price levels of $50 a pack they don't. (Which is inevitably leading to hugely profitable smuggling and increasingly violent turf wars, but I digress.)
Nothing about the law is really about danger. It's all based on an international weapons treaty. In my opinion, the more you know about weapons and weapons laws, the more you realize how often ridiculous cases arise.
Dont forget cobblestone in regions with high natural radioactive materials. If they mine for uranium in the rocks the rocks used to pave the surface and build houses are going to be also mildly active .
This sounds a bit like it involved those glow vials that people use on torches? But those contain tritium. Not plutonium. And it's beta radiation not alpha.
I can imagine that some officials had some concerns when they heard of plutonium to be honest. Besides radiation hazards it's also very toxic. But yeah they should have just taken it away and left it at that, considering the tiny quantity.
Ps this whole story reminds me of back to the future :)
> if you sidestep the issue of waste
If you do that, just sidestep the elephant, then nuclear is very attractive indeed!
The waste isn't even that bad. There's not that much of it and we have extremely safe storage solutions. We way over engineered the safety by orders of magnitude. Nuclear waste storage facilities can take a direct missile hit and still be safe.
However kitty litter will take them out https://practical.engineering/blog/2025/4/15/when-kitty-litt...
Reality likes to have a word with you:
> we have extremely safe storage solutions
This doesn't mean "we don't have unsafe storage solutions".
Humans are simply terrible at long-term safety. How often do we have to experience that until we say: while it might be theoretically possible to store this stuff securely for thousands of years, apparently, we are just unable to do it, be it because of incompetence, greed, or both.
>Humans are simply terrible at long-term safety
He says while we carbon swaths of our planet out of habitability at current technological/economic levels because the available solutions are good and not perfect.
Surely you see the irony.
Do you see the irony in trying to fix a problem caused by persistent, universal short term and selfish thinking with a solution which relies on no one thinking like this in the future anymore?
Sometimes it is good to tradeoff solving a known short term problem, by taking on a solution with a uncertain long term issue.
If the world had continued to adopt nuclear power unabated, it is likely that climate change would not be a problem, and millions of cases of cancer not occurred.
This is not to say it is now time to adopt nuclear carte blanche, but to demonstrate that your way of thinking is not without issue either.
We better get good at it. There are many dangerous chemicals used in all kinds of industry that we need to store forever because they will always be harmful to human health. Lead, mercury, cadmium, and other toxic elements will never break down.
> There are many dangerous chemicals used in all kinds of industry that we need to store forever
Or better yet, reuse.
I’d rather us try and almost always successful store harmful waste than spew all of it directly into the air, killing millions of people. Over a million people die every year from carbon emissions from things like gas and coal power plants and vehicles
You'd think if that were the case, you'd at least know someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who's cause of death was coal fired power plant emissions.
You're characterising it wrong. Epidemiologists estimate the days of lost life across a population due to environmental exposures.
If you add all those up they aren't equivalent to number of lives lost.
People who are exposed to radiation typically do not die of acute radiation poisoning. They die of cancers years later. People who are exposed to coal plant pollution also die of cancers and all sorts of pulmonary diseases.
You do probably know someone, and almost definitely know someone who knows someone, whose death was due to chronic coal fired power plant emissions. The fact that that's not what's on the death certificate doesn't mean it's not what happened.
respiratory disease kills over 8 million people a year, and that disease is very often largely attributable to air pollution
I think people also heavily underestimate what 1000s of years means. This type of storage has to survive 3x as long as the Egyptian pyramids. The problem is not just technological. At those timespans you can’t assume the country you live in - or the language you speak - to still exist.
An interesting example of bad waste management in the 70's.
But hardly an argument for how safe nuclear energy can be. You wouldn't judge the safety of aviation based on the Wright brothers plane.
Also note that one of the problems on that mine is not only the radioactive waste, but also mercury, lead, arsenic, and other product not coming from nuclear facilities. That kind of waste is dangerous for basically ever compared to the radioactive atoms. Yet nobody talk about it.
Nuclear energy is not the only industry producing nuclear waste. You've got also significant radioactive waste produced by the medical, research, defence, mining, and other industries. And so we need safe waste storage regardless of the existence of nuclear power plants.
do you have a link with where all the gigatons of CO2 emitted annually are stored safely?
Nuclear waste is not released in the atmosphere. You cannot compare solid waste in canisters and what gets out of the smokestacks.
Not sure why you're down voted, but who cares. This is THE issue. I hope you're forgiven, in time, for stepping out of line in the cathedral of modern nuclear power.
It is not "THE" issue, it's barely even "an issue". The amount of radioactive material produced by a fission plant, and the form in which it comes, makes it trivial to store relatively safely - certainly much, much easier than the CO2 waste that most of our other energy generation solutions emit.
Also, the biggest issues with nuclear power are (1) the risk of catastrophic meltdowns, (2) the risk of using it as cover for nuclear armament, (3) the massive capital expenditure to create a plant, and (4) the amount of water needed for cooling and running the plant. All of these make the problem of taking some radioactive rocks and burying them trivial in comparison.
Do I remember correctly that modern thorium-based reactor designs mitigate at least #1 and #2?
And #4 can be addressed by not using potable water for cooling. Even assuming a reactor is water-cooled in the first place, that water has to be purified anyway before it can be used as coolant - so might as well just use seawater if you're gonna have to purify it anyway.
Hell, a coastal nuclear plant could be a net-negative water consumer with a desalination plant onsite. California could completely abolish the very notion of "drought" within its borders by going all-in on nuclear and desalination. It probably never will, though, because rich landowners are California's most protected class and anything that'll lower their property values (by "ruining" the pretty coastal views) is verboten.
I actually tried to do some back-of-the-napkin calculations about this a while ago and unfortunately, even if you made nuclear regulations sane, so that the cost came down significantly, I still don't think it would be cheap enough for ag use, which is the actual issue with droughts in CA. Municipal water you could likely supply completely with desal and it wouldn't even get that much more expensive, but 70% of water use in CA is for ag, and they couldn't support the price increase.
As it stands, agricultural water users are massively underpaying (given the high demand and dwindling supply); correcting that would make nuclear-powered desal a lot less unattractive. Southern California in particular is a major issue, given the widespread effort to grow crops in the Mojave for whatever boneheaded reason; if they want to do that, then they should absolutely be making their own water via desal instead of robbing Northern California (via the aqueduct system) and Nevada/Arizona (via the Colorado River's mandatory downstream allocations) - and if desal water's "too expensive", then the prices of both of those sources needs jacked up to match it.
Probably won't ever happen, though, given how hard the ag sector lobbies for every direct and indirect subsidy they can get.
The nuclear waste issue is such a non-issue that the overwhelming majority of nuclear waste, the actual spent fuel, is stored on site at the nuclear power plants.
Long lived nuclear waste just isn't that radioactive, and highly reactive nuclear waste products just aren't that long lived.
If the waste is vitrified (glassified) it becomes basically chemically non-reactive too.
This is an important point that a lot of people don't seem to understand. The longest live materials that are the hardest store are the least dangerous.
Least dangerous. I recommend storing them in a shed next to your home. Thanks for stepping up. We appreciate you.
You are acting like this is some kind of gotcha...I literally would do this for extremely reasonable sums. Unless you are grinding up and swallowing these materials (which requires that you first break into their storage casks), they are not at all dangerous.
Happily. As long as I also receive a billion dollar check and the necessary permits for digging a ridiculously deep shaft straight down.
The issues surrounding long term storage are almost entirely political.
All I read above is "If's" "As long as" "Unless'" , etc.
I'll do further research but my initial impression is that you're all operating like economists ... "ceteris paribus".
The funny thing is. Life isn't like that. Mismanagement, cost compromises, engineering fuck ups, climate disaster, terrorism, etc are almost de rigueur ...
You've not convinced me.
There are many cases where I'd agree with you that the economic model is an elaborate mathematical ruse to discount externalities and critical tail risks.
In this case I'll pose a question. Consider a geologically stable location within the US of your choosing. How deep would a hole have to be before you would no longer be concerned about the potential consequences of mishaps? Is that depth technologically viable for us to reach today?
Keep in mind that the contingency plan here is to simply fill in the pit and forget that it exists.
Isn't this the same stuff they used to put in aeroplane tails as a counterweight?
No, it's weapons-grade fissile material (in microscopic amounts); the engineering material used for its weight, depleted uranium, is not such a thing.
True, depleted uranium is not fissionable, but it's still nasty stuff. It is used for amor-piercing ammunition and turns into fine dust on impact. For instance, kids playing in abandoned tanks inhale it, and it still radiates alpha and beta particles, leading to lung cancer later in life. It needs to be outlawed.
You're welcome to go to the front lines and attack the Russian tanks with your own preferred tools!
The people doing the actual work, today, use depleted uranium[0] rounds, because they have common sense and prefer to not have a main battle tank survive long enough to shoot back at them. "Let's not use (mildly) toxic weapons" is a fair-weather principle that disappears the moment the weather ceases being fair. Like cluster bombs, or landmines: all of the civilized countries in Europe that adopted these idealistic bans, in peacetime, they're repealing those treaties left and right, now that the moral dilemmas are no longer academic.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/world/us-send-its-first-depleted-ura... ("US to send depleted-uranium munitions to Ukraine")
> You're welcome to go to the front lines and attack the Russian tanks with your own preferred tools!
By that logic, we should skip the depleted uranium and head straight to thermonuclear weapons, and throw in some Sarin for good measure. No, the purpose of prohibiting such weapons is for wartime, and whilst it is true that some countries are backsliding on previous commitments, that comes out of cowardice; it should not be reinterpreted as pragmatism. The rules of war weren't idealistic, they were prompted by very real horrors that were witnessed on the ground, especially during the Great War.
I don't believe that's historic; the landmine convention was drafted in 1997, and the cluster bomb one in 2008. The European nations that dominated these movements (USA signed neither) were in peacetime, and had known nothing other than peace for a very long time.
The treaties they're withdrawing from today aren't the post-WW1 Geneva conventions; they are modern treaties that were in actuality products of eras of peace.
> I don't believe that's historic; the landmine convention was drafted in 1997, and the cluster bomb one in 2008
Not historic in the sense of 'old', but still motivated by real horrors that Europe witnessed. The Bosnian War occurred only a couple of years prior to 1997 and left the region with over a thousand square kilometres of land contaminated by live landmines, which are still being cleared today. I don't know about cluster bombs specifically, but I would imagine that the (widely televised) Second Gulf War and the conflict between Israel and Lebanon had something to do with changing European perception of the weapons.
Certainly, the treaties are always drawn up in peacetime - it would be impractical to do so during an active conflict. However I believe that all of them have been prompted by some violent, horrific conflict in the years immediately beforehand.
> However I believe that all of them have been prompted by some violent, horrific conflict in the years immediately beforehand.
And in the cases of most of the European signatories, either the blinding naivete that they would never need to fight a "real war" again, or the disingenuous belief that while _they_ could take the moral high ground by signing and abandoning those weapons, the US would show up and use them in their defense if the time came. It also allowed these countries to coach more of their defense cuts in moral terms, rather than simply as saving money.
Now, of course, those illusions have been rightfully shattered, and these countries have been reminded that cluster weapons and mines are used on the battlefield because they _work_. And modern cluster munitions with low dud rates and mines with automatic neutralization go a long way towards reducing the collateral damage.
Europe has been dealing with unexploded ordinance from the fallout of European wars for over a century.
Of the countries you listed, its the US that has not actually known war. A few of its cities being reduced to rubble and a few thousand of its children losing limbs to land mines might convince some more of its people that war isn't quite the swell adventure they think it is.
The problem is that it is both pragmatic and cowardly. The unfortunate logical consequence of this is that as a race we will likely cease to exist as a result of a nuclear weapon(s) being used for any number of reasons including political expedience.
I genuinely agree with you and I am glad you are pushing back on those arguments, but our tendencies does not put me in an optimistic mood.
The main reasons those weapons aren't used is not idealism, it's because they're not actually that effective in a battlefield scenario.
Strategic nukes in particular are a hilariously bad example here. In most cases in war, the objective is to take ground, and making the ground uningabitable is counter productive. MAD, aka "pragmatism", is the main factor that prevents their use in general.
Chemical weapons, well, let's hope MAD holds there too, to some extent. But the US to my knowledge never signed any treaties banning them. We took them out of inventory because they're not that useful to a modern, mobile military.
Nuclear weapons don't make territory uninhabitable. (Nuclear reactor meltdowns do, but they are very different.)
More precisely, ground that receives fallout is deadly for 2 or 3 weeks. Ground that has been in actual contact with a nuclear fireball might stay deadly longer than that, but that will be only a tiny fraction of the area of the attacked country.
Ok, but the basic point stands that there is nothing there left worth holding.
I disagree.
Ok, then tell me where the battlefield usage is for thermonuclear weapons. Or more importantly, tell the world's military planners, because I'm mostly parroting them when they (a) say they don't see one and (b) visibly don't plan for one.
The Soviets had a war plan which was shown to Western historians during the thaw of the 1990s in which they nuke hundreds of military installations in the NATO countries except for Britain and France (to reduce the probability of retaliatory nuclear strikes from those 2 countries) as the opening move of an invasion to grab the Western part of the European plain. If I remember correctly, the plan was to send in the tanks only hours or days after the nuclear attack, relying on the fact that the armor of the tank would be adequate shielding against fallout (although I'm sure the plan included an effort to map where the plumes of heavy fallout ended up and mostly avoiding sending even tanks into those areas).
Also, NATO famously included nukes in most of their plans for defending against such an invasion. In fact, the US invented, built, tested and stockpiled a type of nuke (namely, the neutron bomb) specialized for taking out tanks (although none of these neutron bombs were moved to Europe as far as I can tell). Tanks are mostly immune to attack by ordinary nukes: to take out a group of tanks with a nuke, you need to configure the nuke to burst on the ground, and ground bursts don't cover enough area to be a practical way to take out enough of the Soviet Union's tanks in a full-scale invasion of NATO.
They planned all kinds of crazy things in the cold war. Most of them have been phased out, except for attacking military installations which I count as a strategic usage. (And per the surrounding discussion, very much a live possibility, so it doesn't count as evidence of abandoning tech due to the inherent horror. I got distracted but my main point is, these things stay in the toolbox or not entirely on pragmatic grounds.)
My first comment in this thread was a response to your, "In most cases in war, the objective is to take ground, and making the ground [uninhabitable] is counter productive" (and the context was nukes in general, not tactical nukes).
Anyway, tactical nukes don't make the ground uninhabitable any more than strategic nukes do.
> By that logic, we should skip the depleted uranium and head straight to thermonuclear weapons
Yes, actually.
(With a massive caveat being if the opponent does not also have nukes.)
I mean, why do you think the US nuked Japan at the end of WW2? Because it was the most expedient and economic way to kill enough people to break the government's will to fight and make them surrender.
The estimated losses for the invasion of their main islands were 1 million. Would you kill 1 million of your countrymen, some of those your relatives and neighbors or would you rather kill a couple hundred thousand civilians of the country that attacked you?
Ironically, this time the math works out even if you give each life the same value. If you give enemy lives lower value, how many of them would you be willing to nuke before you'd prefer to send your own people to die?
>I mean, why do you think the US nuked Japan at the end of WW2? Because it was the most expedient and economic way to kill enough people to break the government's will to fight and make them surrender.
Except that's not really true. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had little to do with "ending the war more quickly"[0]:
"The Soviet invasion of Manchuria and other Japanese colonies began at midnight on August 8, sandwiched between the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And it was, indeed, the death blow U.S. officials knew it would be. When asked, on August 10, why Japan had to surrender so quickly, Prime Minister Suzuki explained, Japan must surrender immediately or "the Soviet Union will take not only Manchuria, Korea, Karafuto, but also Hokkaido. This would destroy the foundation of Japan. We must end the war when we can deal with the United States."
As postwar U.S. intelligence reports made clear, the atomic bombs had little impact on the Japanese decision. The U.S. had been firebombing and wiping out Japanese cities since early March. Destruction reached 99.5 percent in the city of Toyama. Japanese leaders accepted that the U.S. could and would wipe out Japan's cities. It didn't make a big difference whether this was one plane and one bomb or hundreds of planes and thousands of bombs."
[0] https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-05-27/its-time-...
I've read this too but it doesn't disprove what US was thinking at the time.
People think others think like them. US being a democratic country and considering the value of a life to be high, I have no trouble believing that the US government did think the Japanese government would consider the cost of continued fighting to be too high.
> The "prompt and utter destruction" clause has been interpreted as a veiled warning about American possession of the atomic bomb[1]
We now largely know strategic bombing does not work [2] but it still doesn't stop some from trying now, it certainly did not back then.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potsdam_Declaration
[2]: https://acoup.blog/2022/10/21/collections-strategic-airpower...
That's not what US military leaders were saying then. Not saying that others weren't confused about that, but the US Military establishment knew what was up.
You hinted at it, and in my initial post included the statement that the atomic bombs (and especially the second -- Nagasaki -- bomb) were supposed to serve as a warning to the Soviets, not any attempt to limit casualties or shorten the war. However, I removed it because I couldn't find any direct quotes about it.
Then again, that's not something the US government would want publicized at that time, given that the USSR was their putative ally at that moment. As such, I'm not surprised that my cursory search didn't find any such quote from that period.
From the article I linked in my previous post[0]:
>General Dwight Eisenhower voiced his opposition at Potsdam. "The Japanese were already defeated," he told Secretary of War Henry Stimson, "and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing." Admiral William Leahy, President Harry Truman's chief of staff, said that the "Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender….The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan." General Douglas MacArthur said that the Japanese would have gladly surrendered as early as May if the U.S. had told them they could keep the emperor. Similar views were voiced by Admirals Chester Nimitz, Ernest King and William Halsey, and General Henry Arnold.
[0] https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-05-27/its-time-...
Edit: Fixed formatting and prose.
My apologies.
I left out this bit, again from the same link I shared previously[0]:
>U.S. and British intelligence officials, having broken Japanese codes early in the war, were well aware of Japanese desperation and the effect that Soviet intervention would have. On April 11, the Joint Intelligence Staff of the Joint Chiefs predicted, "If at any time the USSR should enter the war, all Japanese will realize that absolute defeat is inevitable." Japan's Supreme War Council confirmed that conclusion, declaring in May, "At the present moment, when Japan is waging a life-or-death struggle against the U.S. and Britain, Soviet entry into the war will deal a death blow to the Empire."
[0] https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-05-27/its-time-...
The emperor's surrender speech made direct reference to the atomic bombs.
Following the Hiroshima bombing on August 6, and the Soviet declaration of war and Nagasaki bombing on August 9, the Emperor's speech was broadcast at noon Japan Standard Time on August 15, 1945, and referred to the atomic bombs as a reason for the surrender.
"Furthermore, the enemy has begun to employ a new and cruel bomb, causing immense and indiscriminate destruction, the extent of which is beyond all estimation. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in the ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but it would also lead to the total extinction of human civilization."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito_surrender_broadcast
And while the Prime minister at the time said that, the military was preparing to fight to the death and took steps to prevent surrender.
Yeah. An active main battle tank will kill more people faster than inhaling uranium dust will.
(This does not make depleted uranium rounds anything less than nasty. But it does make them better than the alternative.)
What was the last time those uranium rounds were fired adequately, cca 1992 from A10 on iraqi tanks? Or 2003?
Abrams tanks on Ukraine dont need uranium munition, thats a fact. Everything russia puts against them up to and including T90 can be destroyed by regular AP rounds, no armatas running around requiring some special toxic munition. Suffice to say 98-99% of those abrams shootings are aimed at much worse armor than T90 has.
Sure you can try to have the best weapon available for all cases and not give a nanofraction of a fuck about consequences on civilians, just like US did everywhere. Videos of ie Iraqi kids being born en masse with nasty radiation diseases is a worry for some subhumans far away, not most glorious nation in the world right?
Ie we could pretty effectively end current war in Ukraine easily by bombing moscow from the ground with some 10 megaton bomb, or 10x1 megaton ones, the russian state would be in total chaos. Yet we humans dont do it, even russians dont launch those bombs on Europe despite repeatedly claiming so. Moves have consequences, being mass murderer of kids aint something cold shower washes away.
> You're welcome to go to the front lines and attack the Russian tanks with your own preferred tools!
Thank you for not immediately escalating the discussion. Anyway, ever heard of Tungsten? Cool stuff.
I am not really sure but isnt depleted uranium munition kida obsolete by this point ? It was used mostly in unguided kinetic tank shells and autocannon ammo.
But most of the destroyed russiant tanks in Ukraine are due to mines and guided munitions using mostly shaped charges, ranging from Javelins to 400$ DiY FPV drones, neither of which uses depleted uranium in any form.
Yes, the primary use case was in various direct-fire cannon systems, which have become less prevalent over time due to limited range. It still has use cases in auto-cannons because it significantly improves their performance against armored vehicles and allows them to go up against armor that may outgun them.
It isn’t just used in munitions, it is a component of heavy armor. When you blow up a tank you may be vaporizing some depleted uranium in its hull.
Burning tanks aren't exactly environmentally friendly either. Like, without the depleted uranium, you still probably don't want to be eating around the wreckage.
IIRC some Abrams tanks in non-export variants use depleted uranium as part of their armor scheme - again not very safe to be around in case it burns out.
Depleted uranium is a toxic metal but not unusually so. Exposure limits are similar to e.g. chromium which is ubiquitous in our lived environment. While you wouldn’t want to breathe it in, depleted uranium is used as a substitute for tungsten, another toxic metal that you also wouldn’t want to breathe in. Fortunately depleted uranium (and tungsten) settle out rapidly; you are exceedingly unlikely to inhale them unless you were proximal at the moment it was vaporized.
The radiation is not a serious concern. It is less radioactive than the potassium in our own bodies, and in vastly smaller quantities.
Depleted uranium isn’t healthy but I don’t think we should be misrepresenting the risk either. Many things in the environment you live in have similar toxicity profiles to depleted uranium.
The alternatives are hardly better. In addition to worse penetration performance, the tungsten alloy alternatives for APFSDS rounds are not good for the body either, particularly if being breathed in as fine dust.
If you have kids playing on recently destroyed armored vehicles, there will be an incredible collection of toxic materials present. Uranium oxides from DU (which, to be clear, are primarily toxic as heavy metals, not from their low radioactivity) are really the least of your worries when compared to all of the other breathable particulates that will be present (e.g. asbestos, all of the toxic plastic combustion products, explosive residues).
> It is used for amor-piercing ammunition and turns into fine dust on impact
How can it be amor-piercing and turn in to fine dust on impact?
The energy involved is enough to turn the both projectile and the armour to liquid.
Once the projectile penetrates the armour it sprays out aa a jet of hot metal and solidifies as dust. (Depleted uranium also burns at high temperatures, so the liquified projectile is also on fire).
Penetration depth (hydrodynamic penetration) is a function of the relative density of the liquids and the length of the projectile, which is why DU is favoured.
The armor and projectile are solid the entire time. It’s just the pressures involved are enough to make the material flow despite that. Actual experiment: cut the rod into quarters long ways, glue it back together, then shoot it. Out the other end of the armor, the rod is in quarters still. Or at least, what’s left.
Also, most materials will burn at a high enough temperature. DU dust is pyrophoric: it will spontaneously catch on fire at room temperature.
The Wikipedia article says it's "self sharpening" on impact. I think this involves the projectile's leading parts ablating away into burning pyrophoric dust as they interact with the target.
Here's a YT video implying something similar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W_nMRbIlZI
I wouldn't really know how to verify this guys facts, but there doesn't seem to be anyone in the comments claiming he's massively wrong.
Well… don’t stand close to a tank that is being shot at?… or are you worried about the tank crew you are shooting at? good luck „outlawing” killing means, find „more humane” methods of murdering each other. come on.
Most interesting for Australia and generally society is the fact that a judge has to associate the behavior of collecting different materials from the periodic table with mental health issues in order to not ridicule the current laws.
They have the wrong person with mental health issues. Everyone involved in this whole story, aside from some guy with a hobby collecting elements, are absolutely insane. (I live nearby so I have been following the story closely).
And because of that he most likely will have really hard time getting a job after this
Would he though?
This kid (assuming they go to college, etc) could quite possibly get a job in a lab or some other scientific establishment. At a place like that everyone would know about his case AND know how insane it was.
Possibly although given the story about it could go the opposite way.
Pretty sure he won't be getting a license to drive a train anytime soon. Especially not with a recorded conviction.
according to australian laws, he has a pretty good chance to be sentenced without a conviction recorded.
"Judge Flannery did not record a conviction against Lidden and ordered that he be subject to an 18-month bond and recognisance release order."
Thank god, after a couple years he should have a real chance of getting his life back in order.
I get the impression that background checks are basically standard practice in America. That's not generally true in Australia, only in certain industries and roles.
It seems it kinda depends since there are background checks and background checks. In private sector, it ranges all the way from credit check to actual invasive paid background check conducted by a third party, whose accuracy may very wildly ( I don't want to go into too much detail, but buddy had some troubled history in one state, but the background check conducted in another state did not raise those issues at all despite the fact that those same issues would have been treated differently, where he is now ). And then ( mostly ) public sector, where the range goes a little further to include checks for IC, which, apparently ( I am not aware of anyone who had one ), include actual interviews with people in your life.
> And then ( mostly ) public sector, where the range goes a little further to include checks for IC, which, apparently ( I am not aware of anyone who had one ), include actual interviews with people in your life.
Background investigators from the Australian military once came to our house. My father's partner, her friend's son was in the Navy and upgrading his security clearance, and he'd put her down as a character reference. They asked her all kinds of questions – "illegal drugs? prostitutes? gambling addict? secretly gay? cheating on his wife? beating his wife?" – and to all of them she basically said "not that I know of, but as his mother's friend I don't expect I'd be hearing about it if he was". And apparently they were happy with her answers.
> That's not generally true in Australia, only in certain industries and roles.
In software and IT, it is standard practice (in my personal experience) for private sector employers in Australia to ask for a national police check (criminal record).
Financial firms (such as banks) demand it, because they don't want to hire people with a criminal record for fraud or theft, they worry they'll use their insider access to commit fraud or theft again. And they often put standard terms in their vendor contracts to demand any vendor employees working on the contract also have a pre-hire criminal record check. Which means if you have finance industry customers (or hope to get them in the future), the simplest approach is just to do it for all your employees. If you are some small business doing tech support for other small businesses, you might not bother.
But, since this is not fraud or theft, they officially speaking don't care – whether they would in practice, likely depends on the individual company (hiring manager and HR). Plus someone else mentioned there was no conviction recorded, which means he won't get a criminal record for this – well, it will probably remain in the database forever, but it will be flagged as hidden, so an ordinary police check won't include it. (I thought maybe that he might temporarily have a record until his bond expires, but reading more about it, sounds like that isn't actually true.)
> In software and IT, it is standard practice (in my personal experience) for private sector employers in Australia to ask for a national police check (criminal record).
My personal experience has been quite different. I’ve done one in twenty years (hosting and telecommunications) and only because this time, I’m working closely with government.
Possibly depends on how big a firm it is and what kinds of customers it has - the bigger the firm, and the more sensitive the customers (big banks, government, military), the greater the odds of at least a pre-hire criminal record check
Also standard for any job working with vulnerable people (originally just minors, increasingly the elderly and disabled as well)-sometimes those checks are only for specified types of crimes, but the “types of crimes” included are broader than you think-e.g. assault is included (even if non-sexual and against another adult)
I find it a bit odd for press to name the person and discuss their health matters on top. Sounds like quite a punishment in itself getting branded like that.
In e.g. Finland names are not published by the press unless the crime is severe and there's a conviction or the person is already a public figure.
Yeah, this is despicable. For at least the next two decades, if you Google this guy's name, you'll see these stories depicting this guy as either a dangerous criminal or a sadly misguided, mentally unhealthy man, when all he did was order some cool rocks for his collection.
These laws need to change, given the Internet's long-term memory.
Trials are public. This is a feature. This means everything can be reported unless the court puts a ban on it. Note, too that the guy pleaded guilty in this case and I think it is right to publicise the court's reasons for the penalty, or lack thereof.
In the UK they release mugshots, full names, and approximate address in the media, after a guilt verdict. Names and approximate addresses are published before since trials are public.
Finland, Germany, France, etc. have gone to another extreme. In France they now even withhold the names of people arrested in the act of murder or terrorism because "people are presumed innocent" and "their privacy must be protected"... which is pushing it beyond sensible and common sense, and is fairly recent practice that seems to have spread from Germany.
Hard disagree. It's well known that people who are falsely accused of such crimes end up having to live with the damage to their reputation even after a court finds them innocent, because that's not the news story people remember. In such societies, one's life is effectively ruined the moment one is accused.
Innocent until proven guilty, and the same goes for the court of public opinion.
There is a big difference between being accused and going to trial. I agree that identities should not be published based only on "accusations".
There is a big difference between being caught in the act and charged following an investigation.
Currently Europe is moving/has moved to an extreme position beyond common sense as it has done on several other issues based on "good intentions".
In some cases there is also a pressure to charge and go to trial just based on accusations (e.g. rape cases), which is another issue.
You are still innocent at trial.
There's no good from this only figurative village mobs and witch hunts.
From my experience something culturally more common in the anglosphere too.
This is probably also an instance of a significant cultural difference. Continental Europe generally believes in rehabilitation, whereas the Anglosphere - and the US in particular - strike me more as having a vengeful justice system.
Public shaming of people at trial is incompatible with the belief in rehabilitation.
Shame of being convicted of a crime and rehabilitation are separate issues and this is not a cultural difference between continental Europe (which isn't even an homogeneous entity) and the "Anglosphere", either per se.
In Finland sentence can be reduced if the case has been publicized widely, i.e. the "shame" is seen as a punishment itself.
Being labeled as "a criminal" for sure hinders rehabilitation. It reduces opportunities and probably affects identity.
Based on how crime and offenders are publicly discussed in the US, it seems there's very little interest in rehabilitation, except if the person is of high status. Per my common sense the US culture is often just plain cruel with people revelling in others' suffering if they are labeled as "outsiders".
> In Finland sentence can be reduced if the case has been publicized widely, i.e. the "shame" is seen as a punishment itself.
This is to some extent true in the UK as well. Pubic figures are likely to lose their income if convicted of a crime, whereas someone in a less visible or responsible profession is more likely to be able to continue working immediately after serving their sentence (or during, if the sentence is non-custodial). This is therefore considered a mitigating factor during sentencing.
One result of this is that the law can sometimes appear to be more lenient on celebrities or other notable individuals, but it is really just making the system equitable so that the sentence has the same effect regardless of the criminal's personal situation.
Don't the celebrities have more money and resources? To make the sentence have the same effect they would be given harsher sentences.
What is the "common sense" here? My common sense can't see really any benefits from publicizing the information.
Don't you think that if it's in the name of the people that the people should have the right to know? Aren't trials public anyway?
If you are interested, you can go to the court to watch the proceedings or get the documents.
OK. How am I then not allowed to post here what happened in the court?
IANAL, but in general, doxxing people is just a really mean thing to do.
Convicted criminal? Sure, write a story. In the most hopeful case, the sentence they serve will help reintegrate them with society - even then, it's good to know who you're dealing with.
Proven innocent? Lawful or not, you're now carrying the weight of possibly ruining someone's life even further. Sleep on that.
In the UK, a story is legally considered libellous if it's written in a way that could harm its subject, even if the facts are true. That means it would be a tort against the convicted criminal to name them if it wouldn't be in the public interest to do so.
Libel strictly implies false statement and it is a full defence to show that the statement is true:
"It is a defence to an action for defamation for the defendant to show that the imputation conveyed by the statement complained of is substantially true." [1]
That has to be the case otherwise it would be unlawful to say or publish anything negative about someone!
Public interest defence applies when the statement published was false.
Note that convicted criminals are always publicly named unless the court forbids it. In that latter case naming the person would still not be libel but contempt of court (which potentially means jail).
> Convicted criminal? Sure, write a story. In the most hopeful case, the sentence they serve will help reintegrate them with society - even then, it's good to know who you're dealing with.
Even this is somewhat problematic. There seems to be a widespread idea that "criminality" is somehow an integral feature of some (un)people for whom almost anything goes, their lives being ruined is of no concern (not saying you imply these), and it's crucial to know who have this feature.
Something like this was actually a phrenologically motivated "scientific" view in the 19th century most famously by Lombroso's phrenological and eugenical "theory", but other "biological theories of criminality" are still around. It's not that such views are necessarily widely held, but it was the backdrop of the development of much of criminal policy.
The distorted view of crime and the tragedies it causes for both "innocent" and "criminal" is really sad.
Note: I'm not really arguing against you rollcat here or attributing this thinking to you. Just something tangentially related.
Yep that was a silly assumption on my part; I've just remembered a story from like 10 years ago. One of my skate buddies, very chill and motivated guy. He's had a terrible accident. He was in his home, mixed alcohol with his new medicine (which he had no idea he mustn't), and suddenly woke up strapped to a hospital bed, guards in the room. Turns out he drove a car and killed a person. He doesn't remember any of that happening, but he's had alcohol in his blood, the verdict was "obviously guilty". He served 2 years in prison, now can't find a job. Sometimes shit happens.
You are allowed to post what happened in the court. You are also allowed to share names and even video to at least a limited audience.
OK, so like on my X account where I publish names of people on trial.
That depends on the case and for what purpose the names are published. But I'd say usually there will be no legal ramifications.
What is the purpose for publishing the named?
You are still innocent at trial.
There's no good from this only witch hunts. Something more common more recently in the anglosphere too.
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Trials are public in Finland, Germany, France etc. In some very severe crimes the name of the suspect may be published. For publicly discussed crimes the names can be usually found in some crime related discussion forums.
People are presumed innocent and their privacy must be protected. The mugshot porn is not good for anybody or the society in general.
This seems to introduce a lot of ambiguity to the concept of being public, in the sense that physical presence is being distinguished from a mediated, virtual presence, and the latter is considered somewhat tainted.
The same peculiar notion was present in the moral panic around Google Street View in Europe, where the exact view anyone can have from a public street was considered dangerous once digitized and copied.
There is a difference of information being public vs publicized. There's a huge difference in consequences for individuals of how widely information is distributed and how easily available it is.
This of course predates the internet. Publicizing generally available information about individuals or compiling them into databases for no acceptable reason has been illegal for ages at least in most of Europe.
The easier distribution by internet does cause some new questions in this and I'm not sure if restricting to "meatspace access" is optimal, but it is mostly what we have now.
Even if you are arrested in the act of killing someone you may have some defence that means you are not committing murder (e.g. self-defence, diminished responsibility, I think France still has ‘crime in the heat of passion’ as a defence)
The replies are getting absurd but unfortunately very illustrative of the state of Europe in 2025.
The "good intentions" have indeed led to a situation in which criminals are protected beyond the level of protection and rights afforded to victims and law-abiding citizens.
People can get in trouble by publishing CCTV footage to identify criminals, to give one basic example. But that's to be expected if some people think that even convicted criminals'privacy should be protected...
> The "good intentions" have indeed led to a situation in which criminals are protected beyond the level of protection and rights afforded to victims and law-abiding citizens.
Is this true?
> The "good intentions" have indeed led to a situation in which criminals are protected beyond the level of protection and rights afforded to victims and law-abiding citizens.
Have you compared the crime rate between e.g. Europe and USA?
People who have been sentenced of a crime are people too and (should) have rights. Its better for everybody.
That's whataboutism, red herring, and strawman in a single comment, I'm afraid.
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That's great and all but it's also just not true. Take it from someone living in Germany for the past decade.
Same in Germany.
I think most continental European countries do this. The publishing of names like this seem more like an Anglosphere thing. In Denmark, the press norm is usually first to publish names when they get a prison sentence of 2+ years.
The 2+ years is the standard in Finland as well. Notably a lot heavier crime usually has to take place for such sentence than in US or even UK.
In this case there was a conviction. Hence the two year good behavior bond, rather than being free and clear.
The internet has screw all that up.
The criminal justice system should be transparent. Anyone should be able to watch any proceedings. This fits with your requirements as long as people don't report it.
The Australia Federal Court live streams but it is illegal to yt-dlp / photograph the monitor etc - https://www.youtube.com/@FederalCourtAus/streams
You also need people before and after (if convicted) to know. For instance witnesses or if they too were victims of crime. This is the impossible problem.
It's not even the reporting, it's easy search, as old newspapers have been scanned I've seen a few family secrets (of people still alive) that I would never have known and never needed to know.
The court proceedings and decisions are public and can be followed on site and the documents can be acquired by anyone. This is indeed important for transparency and accountability of the system.
However the proceedings aren't streamed and the documents aren't online. Some cases can be published online (e.g. supreme court ones) but with identifying information redacted. I think this is good.
The policy is voluntary by the press, not a law. Although in some cases publishing such information could be deemed violation of privacy if it's not deemed of public importance. And compiling databases of the personally identifying information could be illegal.
Even worse is that if you google the poor blokes name they had the paparazzi out taking courthouse photos.
The gutter press in Australia have a field day at peoples expense.
Plenty of precedent of throwing high profile court cases too (hard to find unbiased jurors etc). Lately there's been a number of important cases being declared mistrials.
It always seemed that more often than not the people are innocent when gossip rags dox them pre-trial or during a trial.
good. from what ive read/watched about this case, it was absurd and an absolute abuse of the systems in place in australia. the quantities and material properties of the elements in question should have never, ever resulted in the response or charges that occurred.
the explanation that "the judge concluded that Lidden had mental health issues and displayed no malicious intent" is absurd in its own right, even if it resulted in a favorable outcome. what a sad, offensively disparaging, and fucked up excuse from a government.
here is a (arugably biased) relevant video about the subject from an amateur australian chemist that covers this case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0JGsSxBd2I
> amateur australian chemist
I mean, he has a PhD...
> he has a PhD
> "the judge concluded that Lidden had mental health issues and displayed no malicious intent"
Cause and effect.
> the quantities and material properties of the elements in question should have never, ever resulted in the response or charges that occurred.
This even though “The delivery of the materials – which included a quantity of plutonium, depleted uranium, lutetium, thorium and radium – led to a major hazmat incident in August 2023. The entire street that Lidden lived on was closed off and homes were evacuated” ?
It’s not like his activities had zero impact in his community. You don’t mess around with radioactive materials; even small amounts can be extremely hazardous to life and the environment. There’s a reason they’re not easy to obtain.
>It’s not like his activities had zero impact in his community.
They didn't. The ridiculous and uninformed government reaction caused this. Nothing he did was even remotely dangerous.
>You don’t mess around with radioactive materials; even small amounts can be extremely hazardous to life and the environment.
These materials were not dangerous, it was literally a capsule from a smoke detector. As in, an average person would've had it in their house.
>There’s a reason they’re not easy to obtain.
Right, so difficult to obtain that he was able to simply order them online and have them delivered through the mail.
To be clear this was initially stopped at the border as the old smoke detector he ordered was clearly labelled "contains radioactive material".
The authorities decided they wanted to build a case rather than stop it there though so they allowed the delivery to proceed. So it was delivered by a courier without protection because they knew it was harmless. They then subsequently sent in a full hazmat crew to close off the street. Not because they had to, they just had the courier deliver it after all. They closed off the street because the drama would apparently help the prosecution build a case of how dangerous this is.
UPS erroneously delivered the Thorium sample, not the plutonium, which was ordered many months earlier without being intercepted.
The article says “the quantities of material were so small they were safe to eat”
If that’s true, the overreaction and evacuation is higher risk than possession of the elements
You can’t blame Lidden for the overreaction of others
> The article says “the quantities of material were so small they were safe to eat”
The question is did the authorities know that the materials were harmless in advance, or only after they acquired them?
They knew, or should have known. They knew exactly what he had bought and in what quantity, and anyone who knew anything about radioactive material would have concluded it was safe, or if they had doubts, they would have sent maybe two people to go knock on his door and ask to look around.
This was someone or a small group inside the border force who didn't have a clue what they were doing, cocked up, tried to make a big showy scene of things, and then scrambled to save face after the actual experts clued them in that a) what he had was safe and b) was 100% legal to own. (note that he was prosecuted for something that the border force allowed through years before the sample they erroneously thought was a problem, and that was not illegal to own, only illegal under a very twisted interpretation of an obscure law to import).
Also, the question shouldn't be "Did they know it was harmless?" It should be "Did they know it was harmful?" You don't initiate a huge hazmat incident, close off homes and evacuate people just because "you're not sure it was harmless." You do that when you know it's harmful.
They did know. It was well labelled and initially stopped at customs.
They asked the ordinary courier (without hazmat gear) to deliver it in person to help build a stronger case.
Details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0JGsSxBd2I
The hazmat crew was literally manufactured drama for a prosecutor (who somehow continues not to be named in this ridiculous case) to build a better case.
Here you go:
Sally Dowling SC - Director of Public Prosecutions New South Whales
Frank Veltro SC - Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions New South Whales
Helen Roberts SC - Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions New South Whales
Ken McKay SC BAB - Senior Crown Prosecutor New South Whales
Craig Hyland - Solicitor for Public Prosecutions New South Whales
Anne Whitehead - Deputy Solicitor for Public Prosecutions (Legal) New South Whales
Esther Kwiet - Deputy Solicitor for Public Prosecutions (Legal Operations) - New South Whales
Natalie Weekes - Deputy Solicitor for Public Prosecutions (Operations) New South Whales
Deborah Hocking - Deputy Solicitor for Public Prosecutions (Operations) New South Whales
Joanna Croker - Deputy Solicitor for Public Prosecutions (Operations) New South Whales
https://www.odpp.nsw.gov.au/about-us/leadership-team
The current head of Fire and Rescue NSW is Jeremy Fewtrell.
They stopped it at the border, then let an ordinary courier deliver it. Either they knew it's harmless or they're intentionally criminally negligent.
That was a severe overreaction by authorities after they knew he had it for months in trace amounts.
What impact?
The impact of the Australian Border Force overreacting after they (seemingly deliberately) bungled the situation when they were first made aware of the situation?
None of the elements this man was in possession of were either in a quantity or quality to facilitate any kind of hazard to anyone. The response by government was unjustified, and should have ocurred before the materials ever reached the purchaser.
I urge you to learn about and understand the properties of radioactive materials before making judgement on this situation. The quantities and properties (particularly the encasing) of the materials in question largely render them inert. These specimens are not at all abnormal in the scope of element collection, and the response triggered by the ABF (complete evacuation of an entire street (note, not an entire radius???)) is unwarranted given the quantitites and properties of the elements (both pieces of information they knew beforehand).
I'm encouraged to see Australia has doubled down on its trajectory and declared curiosity a mental health issue. I can't wait to see what the future holds for Australian creativity & innovation!
I visited Australia once. It is an absolute backwater. The top engineers, maybe 1000 in the whole country, come to the USA anyway to work for Google or Tesla. Not to mention, they import 90% of their specialized workforce from Asia.
I believe the guy got worried he needed to tell his employer, the railway, that he was facing a prosecution. His solicitor advised him not to.
They stood him down and terminated him to minimise risk.
I hope he gets his job back.
I think there is something deeply unwell with the governance in many anglosphere countries. The extreme risk-aversion and deference to the 'concerned neighbor'.
It is the rule of the old and sick, the moralizing scolding of the middle aged schoolmarm hysterically meddling in other peoples affairs.
Some call it the longhouse.
It's sheep behavior. Looking out only for themselves and always going with the flock to hide themselves from risk. What is causing it? I would say incentives.
Fear of predators being the obvious one if we're going with the sheep metaphor.
Follow-up from:
'Naive' science fan faces jail for plutonium import
Australia is an island and islands are weird places compared to continental countries. Border security is ridiculously overkill and there’s a mentality that you can just keep x out permanently.
The first time you go from a country like this to the mainlands it seems weird they don’t check for things like having an apple in your bag when crossing borders.
I’m pretty sure you are supposed to declare agricultural products at customs. Sure, if the apples are cooked into a pie that’s probably fine but I believe most countries don’t let people bring in fresh fruit because of the possibility that some pest (insect, fungus) could be hitching a ride on it.
I believe the point is that in other countries they won’t rifle through your bag to verify whether or not you have brought apples. I’m not familiar with Australian customs though so I could be mistaken.
The US and Canada will both do that. It's at the whim of the border guard though.
And it's taken pretty seriously. Enough to have dogs trained to smell out agricultural products in luggage.
England/Wales/Scotland form an island. None of that is true.
Britain's ecosystem also hasn't been isolated and untouched for many many generations. Isolated islands like Australia have far more unique plants and animals that could be wiped out by an invasive species. It doesn't take much for one to gain a foothold to the point of being impossible to remove, either.
The odds of an apple seed crossing from the US into Canada without a human involved are astronomically higher than one getting to Australia, hence customs are far more diligent in looking for that sort of thing.
Since they're already on high alert, everything looks suspicious I suppose.
There's certainly not a tv show then that follows border agents around like in Aus/NZ.
If there's one thing Australian's all agree it, it's that carrying fruit across certain state boarders is generally a bad idea.
Nah, there are many island nations in the world, especially in oceania. Only NZ and AU are particularly overkill and security for x and y.
Case in point, I go to Indonesia and Philippines - I buy produce in either country to bring to the other country, full declare it, show it - no one cares. Several kilograms as in 10kg+.
Meanwhile, airplane gives passangers apples on flights to New Zealand (or was it AU?) and they all get fined $1000 upon entry if they kept it.
Now why do I bring produce from an country to another? Cost and availability. A green pepper costs $4-6+ in Philippines. It's less than 30 cents in Indonesia.
So, to reiterate no - it's clearly Aussie/NZ overkill.
When I read things like this it makes Australia look like a penal colony.
I grew up there, but have been away for 20 years.
I went back recently for a year and saw the whole country.
It very, very much feels like a nanny state with an insane amount of rules, and regular folks who try to stop you breaking those rules.
What type of rules? Like no feeding the Kangaroos? Those things look like freddy kruger.
It is this sort of case that makes me think that criminal justice systems should expect to output balanced-ternary outcomes by default: not “guilty or innocent”, but rather “defendant is provably at fault / no one is probably at fault / prosecutor is provably at fault.”
It seems strange that, in cases like this where the charges were dropped as ridiculous, you still have to file a civil countersuit for the value of your wasted time and emotional stress — when the original criminal case already carried within it all the information required to instantly settle such a case in favor of the plaintiff. Why not just have any criminal case with a not-guilty finding automatically transition into being such a case?
> Why not just have any criminal case with a not-guilty finding automatically transition into being such a case?
For the same reason we generally don't allow punishing prosecutors when convictions are overturned. By failing to impose a penalty for losing on the prosecutor, you hope that they'll allow themselves to lose more cases.
"Allow themselves to lose more cases" sounds to me more like "allow themselves to pursue more ridiculous and frivolous cases in hope of extorting more people for profit and status"
Overreaction much? Should there be a ban on americium-241 in smoke detectors?
The legislation doesn't include americium, and even if it did‚ I presume it will be imported under license.
https://www.legislation.gov.au/C2004A03417/latest/text says "Nuclear material means any source or any special fissionable material as defined in Article XX of the Statute." and Article XX only mentions uranium, plutonium, and thorium.
In any case, high-schooler David Hahn showed us what's possible with a bunch of smoke detectors, camping lantern mantels, and the like. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn His lab became a Superfund site.
In this kind of amounts it follows that import of coal should require this kind of license because of thorium content.
I believe that is addressed in the sentence after the one I quoted.
"Nuclear material means any source or any special fissionable material as defined in Article XX of the Statute. The term source material shall not be interpreted as applying to ore or ore residue."
Many places have very different opinions on sources inside certified devices vs outside. E.g. in the US you can freely ship an americium-based smoke detector around the place. But the source extracted from it as a cool "element sample", shipping that is not okay and quite likely to get you in trouble.
Americium can’t be used to build a nuclear bomb. I think it’s entirely reasonable for a country to overreact to nuclear arms control, especially if there are escape hatches like the one used in this case to let people off the hook when deserved.
Only plutonium 239 can be used to make nukes. Assume it was plutonium 238 that this person bough. Same thing goes with uranium. Why you're allowed to buy it, because you can't turn it into a bomb.
It's never reasonable to overreact.
Regular old garden variety proportional response should suffice.
It’s sometimes reasonable. Overreacting sends a clear and irreplaceable signal that nobody can fool around or test the limits. It’s a big deal, it will always be treated as a big deal, and anyone who isn’t 1000% sure what they’re doing should be deterred from becoming involved with nuclear materials.
Maybe you shouldn't get involved with bananas /s
Right, this is the kind of gamesmanship that you can only deter through overreaction. “The nuclear materials I want aren’t a big deal - they’re similar to this other thing that’s legal, so I should be allowed to have them.” We don’t want people thinking this way, even if it’s true in some cases, because we don’t want there to be an active market in plutonium at all.
I don't see how ruining the life of a teenager for having something that is believed to be dangerous through fear mongering but isn't does anything good to society. There are so many things he could get legally to make actual bombs to kill people.
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The amount is tokenistic and would not have caused dissent held by a school for teaching purposes. He is a good person and this is a stupid application of the law to no benefit.
Since it was imported through postal services and identified there were heaps of opportunities to avoid this.
This is the least worst outcome having had charges brought but it was an overreaction to bring charges.
He did something stupid and nobody got hurt. The law needs to be relatively forgiving in these circumstances. A culture that punishes people that we don't know harshly for mistakes is not a good society.
The law has been forgiving. No one has been punished harshly. This is a good outcome.
No, there was damage done, to Lidden. Public ridicule, shame, humiliation, the loss of his job and the possibility of having a hard time finding future employment.
The amount was so small it couldn't be used to cause harm
The article says it caused a serious hazmat situation and his neighborhood had to be evacuated.
He did not cause a serious hazmat situation. The authorities decided to evacuate a street, and are responsible for the seriousness of their over-reaction.
The packages were labelled correctly, and blocked at the border, and USPS delivered them anyway. He offered to send them back as soon as he was made aware they weren’t permitted.
The real failure here is at the border, where they were flagged and then let through, followed by the absurd over reaction of the authorities to a situation they’d enabled
USPS is United States Postal Service. They didn't deliver the package once it was received in Australia.
Or does Australia's postal service have the initials USPS too? Not being a pedant, just don't know. (Aside: UK entirely privatized their postal service which is sad given history and doesn't seem to be working out so well.)
Australia has Australia Post, as well as a number of private package delivery businesses but I don’t think any of them are called usps.
If you read more it was border control making a security theater (2months after they were aware of the situation), instead of calling appropriate government agency that are actually qualified to deal with radioactive material.
If there was a real threat why did they wait so long before evacuation, why didn't they call the appropriate government agency whose job is dealing with radioactive stuff?
The next paragraph also reads...
> However, The Guardian reported that Lidden’s solicitor, John Sutton, had criticised the Border Force for how it had handled the incident, describing it as a ‘massive over-reaction’ because the quantities of material were so small they were safe to eat. He reportedly said that he had been contacted by scientists all around the world saying that the case was ‘ridiculous’.
Looks like he lost his job though?
That's between him and his former employer. I'm only discussing the legal consequences.
You can't conveniently consider "legal consequences" in a vacuum. All sorts of court cases have measurable negative effects on the defendant outside of the courtroom. This is often intentional in a corrupt state such as Australia.
This title is terrible, he pleaded guilty.
"Emmanuel Lidden pleaded guilty to two charges: moving nuclear material into Australia and possessing nuclear material without a permit.
While his actions were criminal, the judge concluded that Lidden had mental health issues and displayed no malicious intent. He is the first person in Australia to be sentenced under the 1987 nuclear non-proliferation act for the importation and possession of nuclear material without the appropriate permits."
He pleaded guilty and then walked away without a conviction or penalty (unless he's convicted for something else in the near future, in which case this penalty would be added to that)
> Australian Border Force superintendent, James Ryan, said he hoped the case would make more people aware of the regulatory frameworks around what can and cannot be imported into Australia
Ah yes, the truth comes out. It was about making an example out of him. They knew immediately it wasn’t a big deal but they figured to have some “fun”. I guess people who weren’t aware are now aware that of the kind of people who work in Border Force.
Last year I returned to Australia from a trip where I passed through 6 countries. Of all the borders I went through, the Australian customs guys were by far the worst.
Total cunts, talked to me disrespectfully, took apart all my stuff, forced me to unlock my phone so they could do a digital scan of the contents. I was literally treated better in Albania where I was the only one with an American passport and didn't know the language.
I've had a similar experience in my 2 trips to Australia and even worse was New Zealand. I've traveled to around 50 countries, mostly backpacking, but only in Australia and NZ was I questioned and searched for 1-2 hours as what felt like a suspected drug or human trafficker.
So what about the company selling the restricted material to him? Or the company doing the importing are they also reprimanded in some form?
Not sure who is responsible for confirming whether he had a permit: oversees seller or shipping company, or customs/import upon receipt in Australia.
Guardian article says, "he ordered the items from a US-based science website and they were delivered to his parents’ home.... Nuclear materials can be imported legally by contacting the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office for a permit first."
So maybe all of this fuss was due to not having applied and received a permit?
As far as I recall, border force officials seized parts of the material at some point and later returned it - I wish there was an explanation why it was returned. I never found that earlier and I don't see any new information about that now.
> Australian authorities flagged the thorium sample and instructed the courier not to deliver it, which they did anyway
https://hackaday.com/2025/04/06/a-tale-of-nuclear-shenanigan...
Several YouTubers I follow have been approached by the feds for some "illegal" project they were doing (NileRed, Backyard scientists...). I was pretty sure that this guy would get a warning at most
I wonder how many lost/unaccounted-for medical x-ray machines there have been in Australia since, say 1950.
Just a bunch of theater by the government organization to try to justify their existence.
Would ordering e.g. uranim glass beads [0] be acceptable?
Maybe covered by the following exemptions of section 3 of Nuclear Non‑Proliferation (Safeguards) Regulations 1987?[1]
(1) For the purposes of paragraph 9(c) of the Act, each of the following kinds of nuclear material is nuclear material of a kind to which Part II of the Act does not apply:
(c) source material that is incorporated in:
(i) the glazing of a finished ceramic product; or
(ii) an alloy in the form of a finished constructional product, being an alloy the source material component of which is not more than 4% by weight of uranium or thorium;
(d) source material that is contained in:
(i) a chemical mixture, compound or solution, or an alloy, in which the uranium or thorium content by weight is less than 0.05% of the weight of the mixture, compound, solution or alloy;
[1] https://www.legislation.gov.au/F1996B02071/2023-10-27/2023-1...
Probably would be entirely acceptable if one applied for and received a permit for them.
>can be imported legally by contacting the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office for a permit first.
Everyone should read Oliver Sacks' autobiography "Uncle Tungsten" - the past is a different country.
Back in the day, a child could pick up chemicals and do experiments at home - one day Sacks' parents told him, "We'll install a fume cupboard for you, but can you make less poison gas next time?"
You could also be legally under-age and not allowed to vote yet, but you could just buy pitchblende (uranium) and several other radioactive substances for your experiments.
Yet another instance of "the public doesn't understand radiation".
Not even a month ago someone making a miniscule amount of uranium paint (on a channel that tries to recreate old pigments, most of them toxic) was accused of "creating a second Goiânia"[1].
I wonder why Oz Customs didn't simply seize the shipment as it seems it was declared on the invoice or packing list. Given the miniscule amount, the authorities would not have known otherwise.
On a similar note a Canadian prosecutor in Halifax got seriously concerned about the large amount of dihydrogen oxide in a hobbyist's container.
If you can't hack STEM, the legal system is a good career option
I read that Bill Gates has something like that, but he is obviously situated in USA and also insanely rich
"Safe enough to swallow" seems like a scary oversimplification for alpha-emitting substances ?
Depends on intensity. Microgram quantities of plutonium should be generally safe (unlike, say, microgram quantities of polonium).
Not all alpha emitters are created the same.
The mining companies must want the uranium monopoly really badly.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_in_Australia
He ordered the materials online and displayed them in his room in extremely small quantities. How exactly did the authorities even find out? Let alone evacuate a neighboorhood decide to pursue such a trivial case
Border Force looked into a later order of thorium, and that caused them to go over all his past imports which contained the plutonium. The plutonium had been sitting on the guys shelf for months at that point.
If someone orders something that is illegal for them to possess, the seller should refuse to send it to them. Any other system could only exist to optimize for the number of arrests cops get to make.
That would require every sender everywhere to be aware of every legal requirement everywhere, or at least to every country / state they service.
I mean, if you're selling chemicals, you should have a cursory awareness of the laws in the countries you ship to. And you should clearly mark what it is that is being shipped, so that if you miss something, it'll be flagged by customs.
But governments of the world have a DIS-incentive to actually stop illegal activity before the fact, they want illegal activity to happen so they can swoop in and score points with the public by showing off how many criminals they brought to justice.
Kinda curious what site this was - I assumed United Nuclear (which I have ordered non-radioactive items from), but they don't sell Pu.
there was a much more "interesting" incident circa 1995, look up "The Radioactive Boy Scout"
Trying to have FUN? In the police state commonwealth of the UK/Canada/Australia?
NOT allowed.
You know what else is not allowed there?
Everything else!
Collecting the entire periodic table? Noble goal, but good luck with e.g. Einsteinium.
Simon Mayo wrote a book with this premise: Itch (2012). Sequels include Itch Rocks (2013) and Itchcraft (2014).
People laughing at Australia might be missing the point. It's not only about scientific danger, but also about border security tradition. Australia is an island, and their border mindset is very different from land-border countries. That's why you can get huge penalties for bringing something as deadly as... a wooden chess, to enter Australia without declaration. Not to mention a piece of uranium. Respect the different culture please.
If the point is that bringing items into Australia could have a negative impact as they are not present (such as cane toads, rabbits, etc) then sure.
However, Australia already has much uranium. The mine at Rum Jungle has quite a lot left. Multiple nuclear explosions have taken place there.
This is not equivalent to keeping rabies out, nor a cultural issue.
No need to respect a culture of paranoia and overcriminalization. The same culture is in the US with regard to lawful minority immigrants, do you respect it?
Woah, this doesn't sound like over-reaction but the reporting doesn't give enough details to know:
>While his actions were criminal, the judge concluded that Lidden had mental health issues and displayed no malicious intent.... The delivery of the materials – which included a quantity of plutonium, depleted uranium, lutetium, thorium and radium...
Seems weird that the judge said Lidden had mental health "issues". Who knows how severe or debilitating the so-called mental health issues are? Not sure how the judge can make that decision on his own, about Lidden's mental health excusing him for doing something "criminal", although one wonders too how well the 1987 nuclear non-proliferation law was written, and if it was even applicable given small amounts Lidden possessed.
Key question is Lidden's purchase amounts of plutonium, depleted uranium, lutetium, thorium, and radium for his home periodic table display. (I totally understand the motivation for wanting to do that! I would love to have every element, even a tiny bit, for that reason too.)
Plutonium seems most concerning. It doesn't exist in nature but Pu-239 is the by-product of Uranium-238 used for fuel by nuclear reactors. (Not certain about isotype numbers.) Lidden bought depleted uranium, so that's more okay... I guess. (Don't know what its half life is even after "depletion".) Pu-239 and Pu-240 half-lives are thousands of years. Due to the radioactive alpha decay of plutonium, it is warm to the touch!
I wonder if he even had real plutonium, because even the non-weapons grade costs at least US$4,000 per gram.
Final thought: Chemical toxicity of (undepleted) uranium U-238 is comparable to its radioactive toxicity. Chemical toxicity of plutonium Pu-239, Pu-240 etc. is minor compared with its radioactive toxicity. By chemical toxicity, they're referring to the tendency for plutonium to spontaneously combust if exposed to moisture, or in hot humid weather. It can even catch on fire when submerged in water.
EDIT: Reduce verbiage
You’re questions are already answered in the article:
1. The items were on display in this bedroom
2. The quantities were so small that they were deemed safe to eat.
This sounds like more of a case of the border force wanting to raise awareness rather than any actual danger being presented
The article only said that his solicitor (lawyer?) described the quantities as being so small they were safe enough to eat.
I read some more about it (Guardian) https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/apr/11/scien... and entirely agree with you that the border force over-reacted, and could have spent the money and resources more effectively than by pursuing this.
Also, via Guardian, this attitude is demeaning and depressing:
>"At a sentence hearing in March, the lawyer described Lidden as a “science nerd” who committed the offences out of pure naivety. “It was a manifestation of self-soothing retreating into collection; it could have been anything but in this case he latched on to the collection of the periodic table,”
Plutonium was in form of an old soviet smoke detector, containing micrograms of it. This case is whack.
Thank you. I only read the second, more recent article, not realizing that their was a prior one.
Case seems ridiculous. Judge's ruling, despite no penalty, is embarrassing because he doesn't seem to understand the lack of danger of such small amounts, AND made gratuitous public statement about Lidden's mental health.
> half-lives are thousands of years
This means it isn't very radioactive at all.
> Who knows how severe or debilitating the so-called mental health issues are? Not sure how the judge can make that decision on his own, about Lidden's mental health excusing him for doing something "criminal
Perhaps the judge made the determination based on evidence, such as testimony from experts? I don't know but does anyone else here?
When I was in grade-school, my classmate's father was a collector of model trains. And he was, in fact, so avid and dedicated with his collection that every shelf and available space in his home was filled with those model trains. I indeed visited them a couple of times and, being the grandson of a railroader and owner/operator of a Lionel set myself, I was quite awed by the variety and cool stuff on display. In fact, his daughter once visited another friend's home, and she was utterly mystified as she looked around, asking "but where are the trains?"
Now there is surely a fine line between obsession and dedication in a collector's spirit, and this particular fellow became quite successful in real estate, so that he was able to open up a storefront in a very busy area of town and dedicate the space as his "private museum". By that time he had branched out into collecting automobiles, yes full-size ones, typewriters, purses (his wife liked those), phonographs and all sorts of other amazing, mostly mechanical, wonders. He took over for the local model train shop just down the way. So anyone in the market for a train set can also linger for a gander at his comprehensive museum setup.
So I am unsure if his obsession presented any sort of disability; he certainly ran a business, had a good wife and children (who also ran businesses), and he was eventually able to parlay this collection into something quite public, if only a breaking-even "vanity project" where his friends dropped by.
So, like, I would never discourage someone from cultivating a cool collection of stuff at home if there's a chance it turns into something like that. But just piling on ugly radioactive waste in your bedroom? I'm not sure that's a sane decision. I'm not sure that's something I would pay to see, or even come over for lunch. I would nod, smile, and call some hotline on the guy, myself.
> just piling on ugly radioactive waste in your bedroom
This is an egregious mischaracterization which detracts from your otherwise excellent comment. Lidden was working on collecting the periodic table in decorative display cases.[1] I don’t get the point of coin collections either, but that doesn’t mean I would describe one as a “grubby heap of heavy metals.”
[1] https://www.luciteria.com/element-cubes/plutonium-for-sale
kids need to learn science and some basic market economy. if they do that, they won't be stupid enough trying to collect the "entire periodic table". with Fr priced at like $100m AUD per gram, how would some dude living in his parents' apartment going to afford that? some primary school knowledge would be enough to teach him that gold is actually one of those pretty affordable elements to collect when compared to all sorts of those stupidly expensive & rare ones.
> with Fr priced at like $100m AUD per gram, how would some dude living in his parents' apartment going to afford that?
You buy a rock that produces Francium. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francium: “its most stable isotope, francium-223 (originally called actinium K after the natural decay chain in which it appears), has a half-life of only 22 minutes.”, so buying Francium itself is not a good idea.
Also (same Wikipedia page) “In a given sample of uranium, there is estimated to be only one francium atom for every 1 × 10¹⁸ uranium atoms. Only about 1 ounce (28 g) of francium is present naturally in the earth's crust.”, so you wouldn’t have a gram of it, by a very, very long stretch.
Most commenters here are calling this court case ridiculous, and injustice, but honestly, I think anyone who wants to try this should be gently discouraged and ultimately prevented.
So this guy was a bit mental, and decided that his hobby was to amass a literal "Periodic Table" on display, in his home? Did he have, like, a lot of friends who often dropped by to admire his Table and encourage him in his progress? Or, more likely I suspect, he was a lonely sad sack who would do anything to attract another human being's close interaction.
It also seems that he was amassing a lot of broken junk. Are there, like, photos of his collection, because surely it could not be overly attractive or neat? If he is basically collecting obsolete and unwanted crap then that is a sorry excuse for any "home display".
And yes, perhaps all this material in one place was 100% safe for our hero. Fine. But still, when he has visitors over, can he guarantee their safety too? If a dozen other people got this same "collector's bug" and amassed such a collection, could they also do it 100% safely and legally?
I hope that the outcome from this case is that they can engage a social worker and an agency to help him tip all this rubbish into the bin and find some productive, social hobbies that will enrich him and somehow help with his challenges of mental illness. The last thing a mentally ill person needs is to be isolated with a barely-legal, dangerous hobby. Sheesh.
This isn't really random behavior from some mentally unwell person. There's an entire Reddit community for element collectors:
https://www.reddit.com/r/elementcollection/
And various companies that sell elements in nice display cases to support this hobby.
Sure, it's not your typical model car/train or card collecting hobby, but it's a harmless hobby nonetheless not a cry for help.
Fascinating that you take the court's ruling that he has a "mental illness" at face value.
How would you like it if one of your harmless hobbies was declared illegal overnight and your home raided?
How would you feel if the only way the court lets you go home without a prison sentence is to agree to be declared "mentally unfit"?
I am not sure that you and I read the same article, because you seem to be misrepresenting material facts in some sort of attempt to bait or troll us, so I will not dignify this with an actual response.
The item in question, and presumably the rest of his collection, was purchased in the form of an attractive resin display cube containing an absolutely minuscule amount of radioactive material: https://www.luciteria.com/element-cubes/plutonium-for-sale
Okay, this may have been rash judgement on my part. Sources are confusing and perhaps a bit conflicting. I was under the impression that some of this was a pile of junk.
But if he was really just serially ordering attractive cubes of Lucite from this same California website, then it makes a big difference. One, he was truly invested in the aesthetics of a real collection on his shelves. Two, this stuff was not merely "safe" but completely "safed" and legal in California.
It seems if it was illegal to import to Australia then that's a local problem. Perhaps he should've proceeded with more caution, but I can also agree that authorities sort of blew it out of proportion to have the HAZMAT circus come down his street and make his neighbors wonder what sort of bomb-maker they were living with.