Why can't I be the first in my neighborhood to have my very own nuclear particle accelerator?

From Wired News comes this "Not in My Backyard" story of an Alaska man who wants to put a 20 ton nuclear particle accelerator (AKA a "cyclotron") in his home. Local lawmakers are also rushing to introduce emergency legislation banning the use of particle accelerators in home businesses.

Johns Hopkins University agreed to donate the used cyclotron, which is roughly six feet tall by eight feet wide (slightly larger than the one shown above), to Swank's business, Langdon Engineering and Management.

I suspect that it is the word "nuclear" in the description of the device that has everybody's knickers in a twist. We aren't talking here about something that you can use to build an atomic bomb in your basement. Although they were originally known back in the 1960's as "atom smashers," these things are essentially a circular or oval electromagnetic field that is used to accelerate electrons to a healthy fraction of the speed of light and then send them crashing into a target substance, dislodging a few subatomic particles in the process. While large ones can generate billions of electron volts, the current involved in one this size is relatively modest. The large ones are used to create subatomic particles for study and smaller ones like the one pictured are used to irradiate various substances for later use in the treatment of cancer patients.