Police arrest Swedish man who tried to split atom in his KITCHEN

A Swedish man who was arrested after trying to split atoms in his kitchen yesterday said he was only doing it as a hobby.

Richard Handl said he had the radioactive elements radium, americium and uranium in his apartment in southern Sweden when police showed up and arrested him on charges of unauthorised possession of nuclear material.

The 31-year-old Handl said he had tried for months to set up a nuclear reactor at home and kept a blog about his experiments, describing how he created a small meltdown on his stove.

Safety first: It's best to split atoms in a nuclear reactor - or somewhere far from civilisation

Energy source: Britain has found a few uses for splitting atoms - like powering its nuclear submarine fleet 

Only later did he realise it might not be legal and sent a question to Sweden's Radiation Authority, which answered by sending the police.

 

‘I have always been interested in physics and chemistry,’ Handl told The Associated Press, adding he just wanted to ‘see if it's possible to split atoms at home’.

The police raid took place in late July, but police have refused to comment. If convicted, Handl could face fines or up to two years in prison.

Although he says police didn't detect dangerous levels of radiation in his apartment, he now acknowledges the project wasn't such a good idea.

‘From now on, I will stick to the theory,’ he said.

The Radiation Safety Authority said in a statement the authorities raided Handl's flat on July 20 after hearing that he was handling nuclear materials in an unsafe way.

'There were no raised levels of radiation in the apartment and the neighbours were not exposed to radiation,' research chief Leif Moberg said.

 

HOW TO SPLIT THE ATOM (WARNING: DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME)

Splitting the atom requires a great deal of expertise. It cost the U.S, Britain and Canada around $2billion, using around 130,000 people, to work out how to do it in 1939.

What the scientists discovered was that splitting a uranium-235 atom unleashed gigantic quantities of energy in a nuclear fission chain reaction.

It is split from being bombarded with neutrons. This releases more neutrons and more energy. The new neutrons then collide with more uranium-235 atoms, which in turn split again and release more neutrons and further quantities of energy, and so on.

Nuclear reactors are designed to release the energy steadily, while nuclear bombs are engineered to release it all at once.

They are able to do this because they are stocked with uranium that contains higher levels of uranium-235, also known as enriched uranium.
This is a heavily monitored substance – and trying to obtain any is likely to land you in big trouble.