'Naive' science fan faces jail for plutonium import
au.news.yahoo.com
au.news.yahoo.com
The bureaucratic apparatus, especially dealing with law enforcement always concentrates people who enjoy punishing others. Is Australia particularly bad about it perhaps? It seems they get some kind of sadistic enjoyment out of it. It's scary that everyone in the chain here: judge Leonie Flannery, Australian Border Force officials, police, even his employer just had a grand 'ol time punishing this guy. Everyone could have stopped, realizing it's obvious what's happening, give him a warning have him turn in this sample.
And the best part for them, there is no repercussion for it. Everyone can turn around and publicly proclaim they just "did their job".
I'm an Australian, and Australia is absolutely terrible in this regard. There's a saying: the problem with Australia isn't that it was founded by prisoners, it's that it was founded by prison guards. I've lived in quite a few countries and never found anywhere with as many smug and self-righteous people as back home. There used to be two kinds of Australia: the larrikin (fun loving, prankster) Australia, and the wowser (fun hating) Australia, but in recent years the wowsers have thoroughly won.
This has become a kind of stock character (or, at least, a stock archetype for characters) in Australian media, and can be seen in lots of e.g. Australian or heavily Australian-influenced films, often portrayed in a basically-positive, if imperfect, light. This sort of attitude toward life and behavior is on display among several characters in the Peter Weir film Gallipoli, for instance, including and especially Mel Gibson's. In that film, the wowser-est folks are mostly British, because national myth-making :-)
This is the case in a lot of the US South.
I understand your reasoning re US South but 'laid-back' in the Australian context refers more to a 'laxadaisical' or 'couldn't-care-less' attitude—or that's what it used to mean. Class doesn't much enter the picture. :-(
Traffic stops by police are virtually nonexistent because speed cameras already do the work of traffic enforcement for the police. Unlike North America, it is very rare to drive and actually see somebody pulled over by the police.
The cameras are strict through. Demerits double on holidays and no amount of fine payment can get out of a license suspension.
This is pretty much my experience too although the UK would come close.
"…the larrikin (fun loving, prankster), …and the wowser (fun hating) …but in recent years the wowsers have thoroughly won."
Any Australian who's not aware of this hasn't been around long enough to notice it. Frankly it's horrible, I now feel as if I'm an alien and no longer belong here.
I've my own thoughts as to why this cultural shift has occurred in such a comparatively short time but there'd be little point me posting them here. I wonder if there's any proper research on this, if not then I'd suggest it'd be deemed politically incorrect/too hot to handle.
Ostensibly a great idea to protect Australian agri-business (don't kind yourself it's not about the environment). But in practice hasn't been particularly effective in achieving its stated goals [1][2][3].
Extremely effective at bullying autistic kids interested in chemistry though. There's a lot of stories.
1. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-26/white-spot-prawn-dise...
2. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/sep/...
3. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-03/black-market-tobacco-...
> Everyone could have stopped, realizing it's obvious what's happening, give him a warning have him turn in this sample.
I think the sad truth is that they are probably ignorant enough to not even think about it.
We may need to gather more data. He's literally the first person to be sentenced for a law which has been on the books for decades. In the meantime: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...
> Judge Leonie Flannery, Australian Border Force officials, police, even his employer just had a grand 'ol time punishing this guy.
Maybe? I'm gonna wait until after the sentence has been imposed to decide whether it's excessive or not.
If they are in possession of it, yes they should.
Here's a refreshment of what harm these morons can cause ti society.
To me it seems like that's strictly less likely to cause a Goiânia incident than when it was just in an old smoke detector that could've potentially be thrown out without consideration.
The Goiania accident was caused by government imposition, stopping the owners from moving it from the abandoned clinic before it was looted. The government was the moron there, just as the government is the moron in this story. So a good example, but not in the way you thought, as it shows government intervention with nuclear materials leading to needless tragedy.
Maybe that's just the public explanation.
Politicians and the police staged an air field adjacent test firing for media that carried risks that caused restricted, and warning notices to be issued for the air space.
A Department of Defence spokeswoman said the activity was supported by Defence.
“For safety, Air Force used a notice to airmen and provided air traffic control for a period of time in the vicinity of the area,” she said.
“At no time were RAAF Base Pearce’s flying operations impacted. The activity was coordinated between WA Police and Defence in accordance with standard procedures.”
National Shooting Council vice president told News Corp the demonstration was an “orchestrated media event to create fear in the community ... they were clearly told it was too risky but they went ahead anyway”.
“There was a very, very high risk of ricochets and therefore injury to members of the public, press and police attending because of the type of targets they were shooting at … they were very lucky to get away with it with no-one being injured, killed or worse for this little sh.t show,” he said.
^^ NOTICE: this is from two years past in 2023 .. The Western Australian newspaper website has wrapped this with a masthead with todays date (2025). If you search on the story there are several links from 2023 referencing this .. I cannot fathom why The West has done this to date other than it's a rag with a monopoly in a small state and they can't be arsed to do a good job here.
“At no time were RAAF Base Pearce’s flying operations impacted.
I'd go further and guess that had the base been required for anything (sudden emergancy landing, etc) the media event would have been shut down and pushed away.
None of which supports the hyperbolic aspects of the original GP claim above.
Does this excuse even fly? I mean, do you actually believe that a guy who is a self-described "science nerd" with enough interest in chemistry to sought to get a sample of each element of the periodic table would somehow skip any and all references on how the element is subjected to nuclear proliferation restrictions?
It was a small quantity. For comparison Trinity had 6 kg of plutonium.
[1] As we know, both efforts failed.
It ain't no different than the king's men occasionally cutting down a peasant that didn't remove his hat quickly enough when the king rode by. By screwing people on a whim the system sends a "don't cross me, I hold complete power" message which acts as a force multiplier (until it doesn't but Aus isn't there yet).
If they fine someone $3k for a chicken sandwich, https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/fined-3300-for-chicken-sandwic... , what are they going to do with plutonium?
Arguably plutonium guy is being hit with the book precisely to remind everyone who wants to come to Australia that they take import control very, very seriously.
(as well as, you know, the xenophobia that gets involved in any discussion of borders)
and that's what's happening to plutonium joe over there: a not so gentle reminder to the rest of the country not to import shit you shouldn't.
and often in cases like these they do a quite "good behavior" release a year later or something. sometimes, anyway.
Also, speed limits in some states can't be enforced from 0 to 5mph over the limit.
In my country that's also true (with marigin larger than 5mph), but my understanding is that that's because the measurements instruments (laser-based speed meters) are not perfect and it may be a mistake and not actual speed limit breach.
Some methods of measuring car speed don't have this limitation, like range-based measurements (check time when car enters road segment, when it leaves road segment, and make sure the average is under the speed limit).
If you make the law that simplistic, then any good lawyer can void any ticket because no one can actually prove the charge. That will surely be better.
But if the limit is N and the claim is that you did N+10, then it doesn't matter how accurate the measurement is, you definitely did something over N. They don't have to prove something unprovable, they only have to prove that their measurments have always been consistently within a range of error that is nowhere near 10.
Removing some utility for abuse (which could also be targeted/prejudicial/discrimination abuse) is a net positive.
The real world is not as neat as ideals. The real world IS fuzzy, and can not be wished or ignored away.
That isn't correct on a couple of levels. Firstly, the accuracy could be +-11 so the accuracy still matters for working out if something happened. Secondly if the accuracy is +-0.01 then if it clocks you at N+1 then we still know you've broken the law, no argument needed.
Fundamentally you're just arguing that the law is offset by 10. That doesn't really addressed the major issue, which is why offsetting the law by 10 has helped. We may as well offset the law by 0 - then the law could be interpreted by looking up the value in the rulebook instead of having to calculate a different value.
> The real world is not as neat as ideals. The real world IS fuzzy, and can not be wished or ignored away.
Sure, but we may observe that routinely offsetting the value in the law by a constant doesn't change that. In fact it only adds ambiguity because the constant probably isn't written down or consistently determined.
Speed limits are something that people could break through a moment of inattention, so maybe there should be some resilience, even though there is a numerical limit.
On the other hand "high crimes and misdemeanors" might be purposefully vague.
Usually spotted near very sharp turns on highway exits. They don't force you to slow down, but unless you want to suddenly switch lanes to ones 20 meters below you probably want to.
There is a popular Australian TV show called Utopia that satirizes modern Australian government bureaucracies, I am lead to believe that it is quite accurate.
That said I would expect clemency in the sentencing.
> That said I would expect clemency in the sentencing.
This is a great opportunity for the attorney general office to recommend a special punishment: A long suspended sentence (5 years is reasonable) with no jail time and a X-year (X=1?) commitment from the defendant to participate in a public education campaign.
More than no repercussions; they all make a very good living from this. When Australia decides that they are going to ask to put him away for 10 years, they're saying that they're going to spend at least a million dollars on this incident. They know what happened, they know that it's a pointless expenditure, but they're still going to make it.
They're going to pay lawyers, use courtrooms and the time of judges, investigators and regular officers, all in the service of hopefully housing and feeding an unwilling adult for a decade. Triggered by a nerd importing an infinitesimal amount of plutonium for his nerd collection.
It will somehow be even more shameful when they go through all of this, and then the prosecutor drops the charges, or asks him to plead guilty for no time, no fine, and no record if not arrested for a similar thing outside of some time period. That will mean all of this was just makework.
My only conclusion is that either they don't have enough to do, or they are refusing to do things that are difficult. But either way this nonsense should be taken as an opportunity by management and the public which is currently highlighting government employees that it would be good to fire or replace. They don't have a problem with procedure, they have a problem with personnel.
Australian border security is notoriously strict. So in this specific case, yes, and everyone knows it.
The writeup makes it sounds typically Australian in a massive law enforcement overreaction over something innocent and minimal.
Whoever was involved in creating a circus out of it should be fired.
The other day somebody said I could not join a huge table in a coworking space because there was a meeting. Private meeting tables or rooms are paid and require reservation and that table was in the common area. I got annoyed because the guy did not ask if I could wait and go to another table, instead he just matter of fact told me they were having a meeting and would rather I would not sit in the free seats. I told him that I believe this was a public usage table, to which he then asked if I could allow them to remain alone. I considered being a prick but then I considered, what would be the gain of antagonising a dude that also goes there often and all for the pleasure of sitting in my favourite table? I stewed a bit but the next day I forgot it. If I had confronted him I would be reminded of the incident every time I crossed the guys path.
The Commonwealth Director of Prosecutions has form for this. They don't do much other than welfare fraud cases, and so when they get a brief that's actually interesting for a change, they tend to go full ham.
Whether it's actually in the public interest for them to prosecute isn't a factor they seem to give much consideration.
Another recent fiasco caused by their heavy handedness: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/aug/...
"He spent three months in custody before he was granted bail in October 2022, after an earlier bail was revoked because he failed to comply with conditions."
a 13 year old with autism "failed to comply with conditions".
It looks like he was searched on 6 October 2021 and granted bail on 8 October.
I don't know what the conditions of his bail were, but when it was revoked in June 2022, his
Google searches involved topics such as “10 ways to cover up a murder”, “how to murder”, “16 steps to kill someone and not get caught” and references to a schoolteacher.
https://www.childrenscourt.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2024-01/Application%20for%20bail%20by%20Carrick%20%28a%20pseudonym%29%20%5B2022%5D%20VChC%204.pdfCitation: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/part040/p...
Not exactly.
Yellowcake is about 80% uranium oxide:
"Triuranium octoxide (U3O8), the most stable uranium oxide; yellowcake typically contains 70 to 90 percent triuranium octoxide)"
This poor bugger has only done "the right thing" at every stage and has been completely screwed for it. Shameful. Makes me ashamed to live here.
in terms of spicy rocks doesnt the specific plutonium(number) make a massive difference?
[0] https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/part071/p... ("Fissile material means the radionuclides uranium-233, uranium-235, plutonium-239, and plutonium-241")
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-238 ("Plutonium-238 oxide pellet glowing from its decay heat")
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General-purpose_heat_source#St...
A plutonium bomb core requires a mass of several kilograms. This sample was 35 nanograms, or about 11 orders of magnitude away from being a nuclear weapons proliferation risk. The authorities might as well accuse someone of running a biological warfare program for having bacteria on their house's doorknobs.
In addition to the minute quantity, this analysis of a Soviet smoke detector source shows that the plutonium was mixed isotopes, containing only about 73% Pu-239:
https://carlwillis.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/analysis-of-sovi...
It is not weapons grade plutonium, though it is higher in Pu-239 than plutonium from modern spent reactor fuel.
</s>
Did they buy it from Luciteria? This article doesn't say.
So private ownership of plutonium is legal in the US, or is that site about to get shut down?
https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/part071/p... ("[10 CFR] §71.15 Exemption from classification as fissile material")
30 mg of plutonium administered properly is fatal. Much less will give you a significant increased risk for cancer.
These things are dangerous in any quantity and no amount of enthusiasm overrides the risk when it comes to writing laws.
EDIT: this also appears to be 30 nanograms, not mg.
What was the reasoning here - why was the material returned? I assume this would happen in some exceptional scenario and the default behavior would be to seize it. Is it not the case?
I don't agree with that part. The immediate cost will be outweighed, I expect, by the impact on the judge; possibly, if Lidden isn't jailed, on the employer who will remember that Lidden was so honest under pressure and at personal cost; and on everyone around Lidden for the rest of their life, having earned trust that few of us have.
To be clear, I am not being dismissive of your comment. I wish very deeply that it were true, and that I am wrong. Unfortunately I don't believe that to be the case.
You don't know the outcome of the path not taken - lying, for example, also fails, much worse and much more often, and it fails in destroying your self-respect even when it 'succeeds' in some other narrow fashion.
Maybe you would have failed anyway. We all fail plenty. Being honest isn't usually sufficient - you need other skills and resources too. The skills and resources for being honest, IME, differ from those of liars - they take experience and failure to master, like any other sophisticated skils (including lying). Why not spend time mastering them? I promise it pays off far better - even when you fail spectacularly, you retain your self-respect, and you spend a lot less time doubting what you should do (though you still need to figure out how to do it effectively).
Whether the world - your world - is just or not is mainly up to you. You can't always succeed - liars don't get everything they want either - but you can have a big influence, on yourself and others. The world is what you make it.
Perhaps rather than assuming I haven't mastered the skills of honesty, or that I am a dishonest person, you should really re-read what I wrote in all of my comments. I am not dismissing you, you are overreacting to a phrase I used which you understood differently than it was intended and has since been clarified.
I didn't assume anything about you; I just made my point.
When you're entire professional life is based on enforcing the law and dealing with criminals, you end up protecting yourself to avoid cognitive dissonance. I see it all the time with police and judges (so much for your ignorance claim).
Cheaters never win, liars never prosper—sadly, these are closer to being the exact opposite of the truth, than to being true. Substitute "usually" and "often" and it's getting near to the truth.
Yes, they aren't usually sufficient by themselves - you need other things too. And sometimes the payoff is later, as I suggest it will be for Lidden. And people point to failures but nothing succeeds all the time; it's the distribution of outcomes you should look at: Lying fails more and worse and it damages and sometimes destroys the most valuable things in the world: your self-respect, your reputation with others, your relationships, and trust.
Trust is one of the most powerful techniques in business and life. With it, people can make any arrangement with a few words, and not expend resources ensuring and verifying the other people do it. People trust me and I trust them (the ones I have relationships with), and that allows us to move quickly and accomplish much more.
Integrity does one more great thing, it sets an example for others. People are social creatures that follow the herd much more than they realize. If you behave with integrity, you establish a norm that people follow. If you do the wrong thing, you have the same effect. I think Trump, the Republicans, and the far right are having that effect. We are each responsible for our communities - we are the doers and makers, not consumers of morality (except children and maybe others unsophisticated in these things).
It's our free will, you can choose either - an understanding going back to the Genesis and further. And the consequences are very real.
I'm an extremely honest person, and it has paid dividends personally and professionally. It's also cost me a /lot/. But I am not "honest to a fault", which is a saying for a reason. I know when it's better to shut my mouth than to speak out, and sometimes I speak out even though I know I will suffer for it because it's the right thing to do, but it's not /always/ the right thing to do.
In the case of the OP, arguably it's assumed that if it would impact your employer, you will tell them. Not telling them is therefore dishonest - it's strongly implying there is no problem. (For the OP, it depends heavily on the employer and their relationship.)
> It's also cost me a /lot/.
Is there an option that doesn't cost you a lot?
Anybody have the URL?
https://www.luciteria.com/element-cubes/plutonium-for-sale?s...
says "sold out"
https://web.archive.org/web/20200904082652/https://www.lucit... says they had one of the Russian smoke detector sources for $5,000 in 2020.
https://the-collectable-periodic-table2.mybigcommerce.com/pl... has it listed (well, "wish listed") for $500.
Is it possible someone confused plutonium with polonium? That's the Occam's razor here.
https://www.luciteria.com/element-cubes/plutonium-for-sale?s...
https://carlwillis.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/analysis-of-sovi... ("Analysis of Soviet smoke detector plutonium" (2017))
(and HN thread, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13616574 )
That analysis says these contained about 40 μCi of Pu-239, or 0.7 mg.
Id like to see a system where judging those who have supposedly done wrong is done almost entirely by the community, not the government. Government/security forces (including police) intervention should be a last resort.
The law has little gaps like this where someone well meaning who is not intending to break a law inadvertently does so.
Minorities tend to have the law applied to them more harshly.
Not everyone has safe access to the legal system, i.e. undocumented migrants.
If you are in a marginalised group and have a crime committed against you, your experience will likely be different compared to what a white heterosexual christian male would experience.
I'm sure all those children abused by priests will agree with you.
However...if judged by the community, its highly unlikely that they would get away with it.
The law fails victims of all kinds of sexual abuse all the time, to the point where most perpetrators get away with it.
Gaps the legal system let some paedophile priests get away with it and also lead to unjust prosecutions like we see in the article.
In reality, the jury has to follow the law as written and there are gaps with various consequences.
If they try to make some ruling outside of the law, it would just get appealed and oveturned.
In such a world I would gladly go move to Japan in an undocumented fashion with 30 million of my closest friends and enjoy the human rights of housing, food, and education.
It also appears that the soviets used plutonium in fire detectors, and that people were selling these sources at one point https://www.luciteria.com/element-cubes/plutonium-for-sale
They're more reliable because they don't stop working when a little dust gets in them like optical sensors.
edit: found it but discontinued... https://www.luciteria.com/element-cubes/plutonium-for-sale
- Who’s there?
- Geiger counter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_glass
I'd probably not wear those as jewelry.