An Australian man is accused of breaking his country’s nuclear non-proliferation laws for ordering a sample of plutonium online in a bid to collect all the elements in the periodic table.
In August of 2023, 24-year-old Emmanuel Lidden was arrested at his parents’ house in Sidney, Australia, during a major operation that involved Australian Border Force officials, firefighters, police, and paramedics. He pleaded guilty to breaching nuclear non-proliferation laws by shipping plutonium into the country, a charge that carries a prison sentence of up to 10 years, but his lawyer is arguing that Lidden is not some maniac or mad scientist with a nefarious agenda, but rather a “science nerd” who had made it his goal to collect all the elements in the periodic table, even radioactive ones.
