Thank god, after a couple years he should have a real chance of getting his life back in order.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
"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."
Regular old garden variety proportional response should suffice.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Innocent until proven guilty, and the same goes for the court of public opinion.
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.
There's no good from this only witch hunts. Something more common more recently in the anglosphere too.
There's no good from this only figurative village mobs and witch hunts.
From my experience something culturally more common in the anglosphere too.
Public shaming of people at trial is incompatible with the belief in rehabilitation.
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".
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.
What is the purpose for publishing the named?
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.
"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).
People are presumed innocent and their privacy must be protected. The mugshot porn is not good for anybody or the society in general.
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...
Is this true?
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.
These laws need to change, given the Internet's long-term memory.
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?
They stood him down and terminated him to minimise risk.
I hope he gets his job back.
Not all alpha emitters are created the same.
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.
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.
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].
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
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.
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).
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 question is did the authorities know that the materials were harmless in advance, or only after they acquired them?
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).
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.
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 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.
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.
I mean, he has a PhD...
(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...
>can be imported legally by contacting the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office for a permit first.
>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
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.
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
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,”
Perhaps the judge made the determination based on evidence, such as testimony from experts? I don't know but does anyone else here?
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.
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
This means it isn't very radioactive at all.
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
If you do that, just sidestep the elephant, then nuclear is very attractive indeed!
This doesn't mean "we don't have unsafe storage solutions".
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.
Or better yet, reuse.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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")
(This does not make depleted uranium rounds anything less than nasty. But it does make them better than the alternative.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Thank you for not immediately escalating the discussion. Anyway, ever heard of Tungsten? Cool stuff.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
How can it be amor-piercing and turn in to fine dust on impact?
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.
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.
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.
Chlorine can also be used as a chemical weapon.
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.
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...
https://carlwillis.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/analysis-of-sovi... ("Analysis of Soviet smoke detector plutonium" (2017))
Nobody should be eating that many bananas.
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 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.
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.
---
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.
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.
Where was anericum used in smoke detectors, and was there perhaps some other region where plutonium was used?
Perhaps somewhere colder, more, soviet-ey?
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.
https://www.reddit.com/r/elementcollection/comments/w557i6/2...
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.
"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 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...
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 :)
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.
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.
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.
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.
NOT allowed.
You know what else is not allowed there?
Everything else!
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.
"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."
Some call it the longhouse.
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.
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"?
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?
mrkeen•16h ago
'Naive' science fan faces jail for plutonium import
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43449645