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Hobbies from Hell - Nuclear Reactor in Kitchen

26^th September 2011

By Charles Wilson

A Swedish man Richard Handl was fascinated by nuclear power. So fascinated in fact that he tried to create his very own nuclear reaction in his kitchen. This was no secret hush-hush matter, he openly blogged about it giving regular updates on his progress on his blog Richard’s Reactor. This site is well worth a visit. (Personally I am very impressed by his kitchen nuclear experiments.)

It was something of a Heath Robinson affair, doing it on the cheap. In a pot most of us would use to cook split peas, Richard Handl tried to cook split atoms. He even constructed his own home made neutron gun to irradiate the thorium turning it from the thorium in the gaslight mantles (Th-232) to the radioactive uranium isotope needed for his nuclear reaction (U-233).

For months the budding nuclear physicist patiently and ingeniously collected his ingredients, prising the valuable elements such as americium, radium, thorium and uranium from an assortment of everyday items he had bought on eBay and in regular shops. For example, thorium he managed to extract from gaslight mantles and it is also found in some welding rods, of which Richard helpfully informs us where they can be purchased; the local Biltema automobile accessory shop.

“A meltdown on my cooker!!!”

Photo: Richard’s Reactor

Gently simmering americium, radium and uranium in 96% sulphuric acid on his stove, to get them to blend easier, the unthinkable happened. The mixture popped, exploded and fizzed as in fizzion, leaving the kitchen looking a bit of a mess after the mini nuclear meltdown.

Being safety conscious, Richard informs us on his blog that he threw away his pills that were on the left-hand side of the stove and did not drink the juice-syrup on the right side of the stove.

Richard survived the mishap. Maybe that was what triggered his the reflection, “Is it legal to set off a nuclear reaction in an apartment block?”

So being the law-abiding citizen Richard is, he contacted the authorities; the Swedish Radiation Authority. Apparently they were not amused, but neither were they quick to act.

After the meltdown Richard cleaned up his kitchen and went out and bought some more radium so he could continue his experiment. On his blog, he said he “cleaned up the mess on the cooker and then I bought some more radium and continued the experiment.”

Richard Handl

Two months later, the bureaucratic wheels grind efficiently, but slowly in Sweden, police arrived at Richard’s apartment and ordered him out of the building with his hands up. Then three men from the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority in radiation suits entered with testing equipment. After a thorough search in the apartment and carefully scanning Richard to see if he was radioactive, the police took him to the local police station to charge him with possessing and handling nuclear materials in an unsafe way. Richard was locked up, but after a court hearing he was released. He is still to appear in court for breaking Sweden’s radiation safety laws.

A spokesperson for Sweden's Radiation Authority, Leif Moberg, said that, “There were no raised levels of radiation in the apartment and the neighbours were not exposed to radiation.”

There is a penalty of up to two years in jail if found guilty under the radiation safety laws. Considering the cost of housing prisoners, and that the Swedish penal system is supposed to be rehabilitating the criminal; if found guilty would it not be cost effective and good rehabilitation practice for the Swedish state to sponsor Richard Handl to study physics at university? He shows the potential and innovative initiative so lacking in many modern Ph.D. students.

The last word from Richard Handl on setting up a nuclear reactor in his home was sadly, “So, my project is canceled!”

The Radioactive Boy Scout

Eagle Scout before going nuclear

Richard Handl is not the first person to try nuclear experiments at home. The Radioactive Boy Scout, David Hahn received a Scouting merit badge for atomic energy in 1991. Encouraged by this success he tried to go one better and build a real power plant in his mother’s back yard. His plan was to build a working model breeder reactor in a shed in the back yard, which would not only generate electricity, but also produce nuclear fuel, using radioactive fuel and producing real reactions.

He actually managed to make a rudimentary breeder reactor, held together by duct tape. This finished product was more radioactive as time went on. Then one day it dawned on David that he could be putting himself and others in danger.

David Hahn after going radioactive

When David’s Geiger counter detected radiation five houses away from his shed, he realized, as he expressed it, “there was too much radioactive stuff in one place.”

David had studied how to construct a DIY breeder reactor in your back yard, but he never got around to studying how to dispose of the radioactive material the duct taped breeder reactor produced.

David probably thought diluting it was the way to go. So he took his breeder reactor apart, leaving some of the radioactive material in the garden shed and some in his mother’s house, but most of it went into the trunk of his by now radioactive Pontiac, which he drove around town.

Three years after receiving his Scouting merit badge for atomic energy, police stopped David Hahn on suspicion of stealing wheels off a car. The police ordered David to open the trunk and were intrigued by foil wrapped packets of grey powder, a mix of objects like cylinders and disks that were sure to arouse the curiosity of a suspicious policeman. There was also a toolbox padlocked and sealed with duct tape.

David apparently had this thing about sealing in radioactivity with duct tape.

When told to open the toolbox, David refused, saying it was radioactive. By now the police were clearly worried and called for backup.

The backup turned out to be a team comprising the Environmental Protection Agency and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, who activated the Federal Radiological Emergency Response Plan.

The shed was dismantled, the house cleared of radioactive materials and all was sealed in 39 barrels. These were transported to a nuclear disposal site in the Salt Lake Desert and entombed.

David wanted to be a nuclear scientist, but he cannot be accepted for this line of work as he has already been irradiated by more than a lifetime’s maximum dosage allowed for thorium radiation exposure. Unfortunately he is still pursuing his ambition in the homemade nuclear reactor niche. In 2007, at the age of 31, he was caught stealing smoke detectors. He was still collecting americium, found in smoke detectors. Americium is a radioactive man-made element that can be used as an alpha particle emitter in a neutron gun to turn thorium into radioactive uranium.

He had long been in denial of the health risks he had exposed himself to. The judge at his larceny trial realised this and although finding Hahn guilty of theft and sentencing him to jail, delayed the sentence until Hahn had undergone treatment for radiation exposure.

Dangerous motivational quotes from David Hahn the Nuclear Boy Scout before he went radioactive illustrating how NOT to think when designing a backyard nuclear reactor:

“If you don’t take risks, you don’t do anything. If you don’t do anything, you are nothing.”
“I knew what I was doing wasn't completely right, but I believe it is important to experiment.”
“If someone is willing to take some risk out there, if their underlying intentions are good, then sometimes the laws don’t always apply.”

Comparison: Richard Handl and David Hahn

Comparing the two men is interesting. Both show a flair for innovation and an innate curiosity that is to be admired. But they are very different men; they are poles apart.

David Hahn was an arrogant irresponsible teen with an anarchistic attitude. He became an irresponsible arrogant young adult with an anarchistic attitude and he believed if he felt like something illegal was worth doing then laws did not apply to him. That is how his experimentation was discovered. Police stopped him on suspicion of stealing wheels from a car, and got nervous when they looked into the trunk of his Pontiac.

Richard Handl in contrast was decent, law-abiding and open about what he was doing and was relatively careful. This is shown by the fact that while Hahn’s experiment ended up in 39 sealed barrels in a nuclear waste dump, the Swedish authorities found the radiation in Richard’s kitchen at normal levels.

The authorities became aware Richard Handl when he wrote a letter to them asking if what he was doing, was legal. He was regularly blogging and updating his Facebook page on the goings on in his kitchen.

Commenting on the discovery of David Hahn’s decommissioned breeder reactor, Dave Minnaar a radiological expert at Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality said, “These are conditions that regulations never envisioned. It’s simply presumed that the average person wouldn’t have the technology or materials required to experiment in these areas.”

Maybe that explains why the Swedish authorities were so slow to respond to Richard Handl’s letter. They probably thought he was joking with them, until, maybe, one of them sitting at his/her computer did a spot of lunchtime surfing, keyed in the name of his blog Richard’s Reactor and saw the kitchen meltdown.

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