Hollington & Kyprianou

The Difference Between Good Goods and Bad Goods

When rummaging through piles of long-disused items covered in attic dust at car-boot fairs, some of my purchases have been in a relatively poor condition, or with bits missing, as has happened with what turned out to be a 999-piece jigsaw puzzle I bought.

This 1000 piece puzzle was in contravention of the Misrepresentation Act, 1967, is sadly, one of the downsides of car-booting.

As the name of the project suggests, the end result will be a Car Boot-Sale in the Shape of the Periodic Table, where my findings will be on display and for sale. Like any good seller, (and like any good buyer) I need to ensure that the goods on offer are not only not misrepresented, but also conform to the conditions laid out in the General Product Safety Regulations of 2005.

The Uncompletable Jigsaw, now 50p

Of course, A Car Boot-Sale in the Shape of the Periodic Table is also an artwork, so the goods could also be said to perform a different use function than a more usual car-boot sale. In this manner, it has been suggested that sub-standard goods could be repackaged and sold for profit. In the case of the jigsaw for instance, it could be claimed that the missing piece IS the artwork.

Given a title and a backstory, ‘The Uncompletable Jigsaw, now 50p’, could be sold as a one-off, a unique variant of a now-worthless mass-produced product. Not quite a readymade, more of a de-made, the deliberate removal of pieces from other jigsaws could form a profitable numbered series, and with a deft sleight of hand more common to less noble businesses, these ‘key pieces’ could turn up at the art world’s version of a car-boot sale.

Although not being able to fill in the missing piece of sky in a jigsaw reproduction of Constable’s Haywain is not a life-threatening breach of the law, some goods sold at car-boot sales have graver consequences if they don’t work as intended.

No Fire Without Smoke

Whilst looking up the history of americium, I found out that it was a man-made element, something I thought would be rare, and that I wouldn’t just be able to stumble across. To my surprise, I found that despite it being a by-product of nuclear weapons research, it is in fact readily available, barely fifty years after its discovery, in shops and car boot sales everywhere. One of its isotopes – americium-241 is used in domestic smoke detectors. A seller with 200 of them being sold at a bargain basement price of £1 a go, urged me to buy several as‘they could save your life’. Convinced, I bought one and took it home together with the nine hundred and ninety nine piece jigsaw.

Later, whilst attempting to complete the jigsaw, I became a little peckish and decided to make some toast with a toaster, which, like many things, was also bought from a car boot expedition. As I wrestled with the final few pieces, for what seemed like and would turn out to be, an eternity, I forgot the toast, the kitchen had filled with smoke, and the smoke alarm that I bought failed to alarm me to the situation.

A Must-have for the Careless Chip-Eating Smoker

When complying to theGeneral Product Safety Regulations of 2005.
(i.e. they work), smoke detectors are highly recommended by the Fire Brigade’s Union for domestic fire prevention. Of the two types available, ion chamber smoke detectors (ISD’s) are the most popular, because they are inexpensive and are marginally sensitive to the more common ‘flaming fires’ conditions that occur in homes, resulting from such things as chip –pan fires.

The active element here- the americium-241 - continually emits alpha particles that ionize the surrounding air, increasing electrical conductivity. When even very small particles of smoke enter the ionization chamber, it disrupts the electrical conductivity and triggers the alarm.

The other type of detector, which uses a photoelectric sensor to detect the change in light level caused by smoke, is more expensive to purchase (the active ingredients don’t come from waste products), but is more sensitive to smouldering fires such as those started by careless smoking.

The Fire Brigade recommend that you install both types, especially for careless chip-eating smokers.

I’m not sure which type of smoke detector Allenheads Contemporary Arts have installed, (the hosts of the residency), but when I stupidly opened the door of their pot-stove to take a look inside and was knocked backwards by a wall of flames together with a roar and a kind of mini-sonic boom, I know its extremely loud, mains powered, and that the fusebox to switch it off is impossible to find.

Swings and Roundabouts

The market price for the nuclear industry by-product Americium oxide, (AmO2), was first offered for sale by the US Atomic Energy Commission in 1962 and the price of US$1500 per gram has remained virtually unchanged. The UK leads the world in exporting Americium- 241, and between 1950 and 1998 exported 474 grams out of a total export market of 748 grams. One gram of provides enough active material for more than 5000 household smoke detectors.

Generally, the hazards of not having a radioactive smoke detector are seen to outweigh the hazards of having them. Government agencies actively promote putting radioactive waste products from the nuclear industry into our homes as a cheap way of saving lives.

In normal operating conditions, the amount of alpha radiation that a person will receive from a smoke detector is seen as tiny, but one drawback of putting a radioactive substance into the line of fire, is that when the detectors go up in flames, they release americium-241 into the atmosphere as an aerosol, which becomes hazardous when inhaled.

In the event of a fire where there are a limited number of these type of detectors, the risk is very low. In cases where doses may be higher, such as in factory fires, or even in the event of a smoke detector factory itself going up in flames (oh the headlines), firefighters take precautions against the hazards of ionising radiation and wear respiratory protection.
As well as emitting alpha radiation (the kind that is stopped by a piece of paper in the form in the smoke detectors), americium-241 also emits something with a little more reach; gamma radiation.

The gamma radiation at 1 metre from an unshielded americium-241 source of the typical activity found in domestic smoke detectors would expose a person to about 3,000 times less than the radiation dose they would receive from the natural background radiation from rocks and soil and cosmic rays from the sun.

You shouldn’t, however, really have a smoke detector near your head when you sleep at night, not really so much because of the higher exposure to gamma radiation that this might cause,- ( 0.014 millirem for an individual sleeping 6 ft from the detector for 8 hours per day) - but more because that means any fire it will detect might already be going full tilt behind the closed bedroom door and not give you time to escape. Put one outside, on a landing instead, unless you smoke in bed, and then get the other sort, as they’re more effective anyway.

To put the dosage into context, when up in the air and shielded by less of the Earths atmosphere, for every 1000 miles flown in an aeroplane, an individual receives about 1 millirem of radiation from the cosmic sources of radiation including our sun.

Of course, if you go to the toilet on board the aircraft, you are also standing with your head a few centimeters away from a smoke detector emitting gamma rays, which adds to your exposure a little.

Waste into Waste

The amount of damage that the disposal of radiation from americium-241 in smoke detectors is seen as having is so small that in the UK and in many other parts of the world, detectors can be thrown out, one at a time, with all other household rubbish.

Even in Australia where restrictions on dumping individual detectors were in place until 2001, they have been removed on the grounds that “the amount of naturally-occurring alpha-emitting radioactivity in normal soils is equivalent to a dozen or more smoke detectors in every cubic metre. The dispersal of smoke detectors, even in large numbers, through refuse land-fill sites is not significant in comparison.”

Of course, the isotopes of Americium present in soils and waters are the result of the very same industry that supplies an endless supply of the stuff, and are there as a result of atmospheric nuclear weapons testing prior to the nuclear test ban of 1963.

The Later Life of Half Life

Americium-241, which has a half-life 458 years, is produced from the decay of Plutonium-241, which has a half-life of 14.4 years. The maximum concentration of Am241 following a release of Pu241 occurs 70–80 years later. The impact of Americium-241 from the atmospheric nuclear weapons test era will reach its peak in around 2035, when its rate of production from Plutonium-241 decay equals its rate of decay.

Because of its relationship to plutonium-241, the decay rate of americium-241 can be used to analyze when plutonium-241 has been purified.

In 1992, as part of its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, North Korea declared that it had separated approximately 100 grams of plutonium from damaged fuel rods removed from a civilian gas-graphite reactor at Yongbyon in 1990.

Seperated plutonium is a sensitive issue as it’s the raw ingredient for making nuclear weapons, though 100 grams is too little to make a crude bomb. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspected the facilities where this took place.

Inspectors took ‘smear’ samples from the ‘hot’ inside of glove boxes at a North Korean nuclear facility, the end of a process where freshly purified plutonium oxide is handled.

The IAEA’s analyses suggested that there were distinct separation efforts in
1989, 1990, and 1991, and thus concluded that North Korea had separated more plutonium than it had declared to the Agency.

In July 2007, IAEA inspectors confirmed the shutdown of North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear reactor, following agreements reached during a series of six-party talks involving North Korea, South Korea, China, Russia, Japan, and the U.S, begun in 2003. According to the agreement, a list of its nuclear programs was to be submitted and the nuclear facility disabled in exchange for fuel aid and normalization talks with the U.S. and Japan.

Made in Manhattan

Americium is one of the synthesized elements, and only occurs on the Earth by human instigation. It was first discovered in late 1944 at the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago by bombarding plutonium with neutrons as part of the Manhattan Project to develop nuclear weapons, which would become the so far, only actual detonations to take place on an enemy territory.

Glenn T. Seaborg rather informally announced element 95’s discovery when he appeared on an American children’s radio show, Quiz Kids, in 1945 and was asked whether any new elements in addition to plutonium and neptunium had been discovered during the Second World War.

What he announced and patented - element 95 - was eventually named "americium" because of its position in the periodic table when grouped in relation to the outermost electron – the chemically similar bit. Since its lanthanide homolog, europium, was named after Europe, Seaborg felt it appropriate for element 95 to be named after the Americas.

Other names suggested by the team that discovered it included ‘delirium’ and ‘pandemonium’, possibly two very apt choices that describe both the painstaking year long process of ‘technically sweet’ discovery, and what has been unleashed by the box of tricks that the knowledge gained has been put to.

- Folie à deux

A man was arrested on August 3rd 2004 and was charged by the UK authorities with offences including conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit a public nuisance by the use of radioactive materials, toxic gases, chemicals and or explosives.

Dhiren Barot, who is currently serving a 30-year sentence, was described at his trial at Woolwich Crown Court as preparing ‘meticulous plans for al-Qaeda figures on a series of attacks in the US and the UK’.

In the UK his plans included exploding gas tankers hidden in limousines, flooding the tube network and a radioactive "dirty bomb” involving smoke detectors.

Foiled by Operation Spangle, the plan involved either ‘harvesting’ the americium-241 in smoke detectors, or just buying fifty thousand of them and exploding them. Had he managed to get away with it without anyone noticing, it would have released 0.002 grams of americium-241 into the atmosphere, described by Mr Justice Butterfield at Barot’s hearing as being able to release carnage on a "colossal and unprecedented scale" if successful.

Other far more effective ways of obtaining americium involve more than several trips down to B&Q. This was amply demonstrated in the United States by its governments own Governmental Accountability Office, which in a sting operation was able to procure enough americium-241 to make a dirty bomb without having to leave their office except to collect their mail.

Setting up bogus companies, and doctoring licences to increase the amount of radioactive material they could buy, within a month they began placing orders for nuclear moisture-density machines, which contain Cesium-137 and Americium-241.

Though it illustrates weaknesses in systems put in place to stop the proliferation of nuclear materials, the physicist Michael Levi points out that the operation is only one part in a complex multi-step process that involves getting the materials, creating a dispersal device, moving the elements around, and detonating it.

When plans or actual sting operations are taken out of context, "it's very easy to dream up fantastic schemes and worst-case scenarios and to take those to their policy conclusions." -conclusions that may distort our understanding of the vulnerability and its potential solutions.

Model Atomic Citizens

At the age of seventeen, David Hahn, who, as a boy scout had earned a merit badge in atomic energy, used a schematic in one of his fathers textbooks, to successfully built a working model breeder reactor in his mothers garden shed.

Hahn’s previous project was not entirely dissimilar to mine in that he had diligently sought out supplies of every element he could lay his hands on from the Peroiodic Table.

He amassed the radioactive material for his working reactor by collecting small amounts from household products, including americium from smoke detectors, which he had bought as a job lot of defective devices claiming he was a professor.

After gathering all of the other materials necessary, he switched the reactor on. Although his home-made reactor never achieved critical mass, it ended up emitting levels of radioactivity over 1000 times normal background radiation.

He was somewhat alarmed by this stage and began dismantling his experiment, putting some of it in the boot of his car. A chance encounter with the traffic police led to the discovery of his activites in a scene, which I imagine closely resembles something from Repo-Man. This triggered an investigation involving men in moon-suits dismantling the shed and its contents and burying them as low- level radioactive waste in Utah.