Friday, December 02, 2005
Spoil Sports
Albert Swank Jr., a 55-year-old civil engineer in Anchorage, Alaska, is a man with a mission. He wants to install a nuclear particle accelerator in his home.This is an appliance that no home should be without. What are these people thinking? PET scan isotopes ready at your fingertips!
But when neighbors learned of plans to place the 20-ton device inside the house where Swank operates his engineering firm, their response was swift: Not in my backyard.
Local lawmakers rushed to introduce emergency legislation banning the use of cyclotrons in home businesses. State health officials took similar steps, and have suspended Swank's permit to operate cyclotrons on his property.
To get serious for a moment, this is pushing the "home business" envelope a little far, but the reaction is one of pure ignorance, the word "nuclear" and everybody blows a gasket. Such devices are far more common that you realize and operated in the most innocuous of locations.
