alt Hacker NewsGood 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
Replies
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.
"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.
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 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.
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!
Isn't this the same stuff they used to put in aeroplane tails as a counterweight?
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.