Alaska Bans Home Cyclotron

SAS member Mark Streitman has sent notice about the plight of Albert Swank Jr., a civil engineer who wants to install a cyclotron in his garage in Anchorage, Alaska.

Swank's story has received news coverage in Alaska, and is now featured in a recent article in Wired ("The Cyclotron Comes to the 'Hood," 1 December 2005).

According to the article in Wired, when Swank was 17 his father assisted him in building his first cyclotron. Recently, John Hopkins University donated a used cyclotron to Swank's company, Langdon Engineering and Management. Swank's father died from cancer, and now he wants to use the cyclotron to produce small quantities of radioactive materials for patients who undergo PET (positron emission tomography) scans.

Some Anchorage residents and politicians think that Swank's cyclotron is a potential nuclear catastrophe. Yet, like high power lasers, the most dangerous aspect of a cyclotron is the power supply, not its short-lived radioactive byproducts.

Allan Tesche represents the downtown district of Anchorage and writes a blog called "The Tesche Report." On 22 November 2005, Tesche, who has been complaining about Swank's cyclotron project, published the following notice on his blog:

"MATTERS OF PARTICULAR CONCERN: South Addition resident Albert Swank Jr. wants to install a 30 ton medical cyclotron in his backyard at 318 West 10th Ave. Producing a proton beam of 16 MEV, his particle accelerator will manufacture Flourine [sic] 18, a radioactive isotope Swank wants to sell to Providence Hospital for medical diagnostics. Downtown Assemblyman Allan Tesche has introduced AO 2005-178 which confirms the Assembly's intent that under current residential zoning, including provisions governing home occupations, the manufacture of radioactive materials by high energy particle accelerators remains unlawful. Tesche's ordinance is set for public hearing on December 20, 2005."

Assemblyman Tesche thinks the proposed ban will keep particle accelerators out of people's homes and garages. But Swank has the last word. He points out that particle accelerators are as common as the nearest cathode ray television screen or computer monitor. These ubiquitous devices generate and then accelerate tightly focused beams of electrons that strike a phosphorescent layer that lines the inside of the viewing surface of every cathode ray picture tube. This process releases small but detectable amounts of x-rays, but CRTs have not been banned by Alaskan politicians, at least not yet.

Forrest M. Mims III