• disguy_ovahea@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1822·
    9 天前

    I know of a hookup. Meet the Libyans in the Twin Pines Mall parking lot after hours. Be sure to wear a bullet proof vest.

    • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.worldEnglish
      54·
      9 天前

      That’s the Lone Pine mall. Some crazy looking car took out the other pine in 1955, no doubt driven by a drunk spaceman!

    • Olhonestjim@lemmy.worldEnglish
      49·
      9 天前

      Look, I’m sure in the year 1985 you can get plutonium at the local drug store, but in 1955 it’s a bit hard to come by!

      • dustycups@aussie.zoneEnglish
        11·
        9 天前

        I’m not so sure. Uncle Tungsten by Oliver Sacks was quite a read.
        He grew up during the blitz & had access to lots of elements. At one point he got to throw 2lbs of sodium off a bridge just to see what happens.

        • dustycups@aussie.zoneEnglish
          14·
          9 天前

          I checked & found this in the footnotes:

          Although elements 93 and 94, neptunium and plutonium, were created in 1940, their existence was not made public until after the war. They were given provisional names, when they were first made, of “extremium” and “ultimium,” because it was thought impossible that any heavier elements would ever be made.

        • Silic0n_Alph4@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          9 天前

          I try to buy my Mum interesting books for her birthday and Christmas and she always wonders how I find such gems so consistently. My secret - it’s comments like this on Lemmy or the other place, back before the great migration. So thank you - this is going straight on the list! She’ll love it 😊

  • Aurenkin@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    73·
    9 天前

    This is the metal region, the non metal region, the metalloids are here and over here are the felonies.

  • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
    551·
    9 天前

    pretty sure… there’s nothing illegal about buying plutonium for a elements collection. Pretty sure, also there’s a lab supply somewhere in australia that keeps the samples in stock.

    Also pretty the russians are having a pretty decent sale on polonium, if you’re looking for that.

    • ryannathans@aussie.zoneEnglish
      30·
      9 天前

      Australia has a treaty that says ALL plutonium in the country must be documented and accounted for. The country is not allowed more than 1KG in total

      • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
        111·
        9 天前

        Doesn’t make it illegal.

        Just, eh, “complicated”.

        Is it stupid to want that stuff in your home? Certainly not without lead condoms. Is it something I’m offended at the government wanting to scoop up? Certainly not.

        Did the guy deserve full on hazmat?

        Well, I’d probably have pulled out the full containment tent and taken a lot of selfies riffing off the E.T. Movies, but I’m a weirdo.

        They could have probably played it cool and that would have been better.

        The thing is that got through customs. It was probably declared by the company, since they already got paid and probably warn people to check “local import laws”.

        • ryannathans@aussie.zoneEnglish
          3·
          8 天前

          Wasn’t tracked, didn’t have permits, it’s illegal. I don’t like it, I think its stupid, but that’s the law that’s enforced by the courts

    • Cort@lemmy.worldEnglish
      25·
      9 天前

      Probably depends on how much they tried to import. 1mg is probably no big deal, but 1Mg would be.

      • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
        14·
        9 天前

        Out of curiosity and for strictly not-remotely-nefarious reasons, how expensive would a megagram be?

        I assume they just bought Ike, a centimeter cube of the stuff. (Which is a common thing for this kind of collector. Most solids come in centimeter cubes if they’re not particularly spicy.)

        • Cort@lemmy.worldEnglish
          11·
          9 天前

          1Mg @ 19.8g/cc

          1000000/19.8=50505cc

          ³√50505 = 37cm

          So a little bigger than a cubic foot assuming you could prevent super-criticality somehow

          • Jolteon@lemmy.zipEnglish
            11·
            9 天前

            Based on the Wikipedia article, it’s $6,490,000/kg.

            Assuming you can legally purchase that amount (which you can’t), you could even find that much for sale (would you probably couldn’t), and the price didn’t go up as you purchased more of a very scarce resource (which it would), it would be about $6.5 billion US.

          • Adalast@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            9 天前

            Cool, though I would assume the supercritical point would be a lot higher for Pu-242. I can’t imagine that anyone would have knowingly sold this kid a fissile isotope.

        • alcoholicorn@lemmy.mlEnglish
          101·
          9 天前

          A cubic centimeter is ~150th of a modern nuclear weapon’s core. U-235 production accounts for every single gram, plutonium is even stricter.

      • ryannathans@aussie.zoneEnglish
        6·
        9 天前

        1mg is still strictly illegal as you need an import permit, permit to posess, a valid reason and the entire country as a whole is not allowed more than a total of 1KG

  • Libra00@lemmy.worldEnglish
    34·
    9 天前

    I have to assume he’s working backwards, because if he’d gotten to Astatine we’d know.

    • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      17·
      9 天前

      I doubt he’s working backwards. Those heavier elements decay before you get halfway through blinking. And most of them kill while doing it.

      • Libra00@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7·
        9 天前

        The problem is that there are also lighter elements (like astatine) that decay so fast we can’t make enough at one time to even know what it looks like. Randall Munroe of XKCD gave a google talk where he covered the problems you would have if you tried to assemble all of the elements, and the problems really maximize around the time of astatine, which he described as the element which maximizes the amount of paperwork you’d have to do. The explosion of heat and radiation from a chunk of astatine would be too large to sweep under the rug as a little woopsie, but not large enough to wipe out your whole neighborhood or city so that there would be no one left to submit paperwork to.

      • sga@lemmings.worldEnglish
        2·
        8 天前

        most don’t, most will just give you poisoning from ingestion (or plain old indigestion), or in off case cancers, but that is not “kill” enough

  • finitebanjo@lemmy.worldEnglish
    30·
    9 天前

    Here is how you get your hands on plutonium legally.

    In both cases it may still be illegal to smuggle into the country and therefor you will need a local supplier after obtaining the proper license. The permit process asks you what amounts you will obtain and who the supplier will be even before permission is issued. The easiest and least harmful would likely be an ore containing trace amounts of a safer isotope. For higher purity you would need a refined product likely only available at government facilities and contractors.

    Ever since the Nuclear Boyscout incident it’s been a lot harder to obtain radioactive elements without tons of paperwork and red tape, and for good reasons.

    In Australia:

    Permit to Possess Nuclear Material LINK HERE

    in the USA:

    Get a certificate to use depleted uranium under a general license LINK HERE

    EDIT: You WILL have a surprise inspection and tbey WILL confiscate harmful materials if you don’t have a license and specific need for them, eg polonium.