The guy's fate is a failure on our society's part.
Imagine if some professor of nuclear engineering had pulled him aside and said, "Kid, listen, if you're going to do this, we need to have you do it safely and correctly. Let's have you assist at my lab."
The story was sensationalized for profit. It's really the story of a mentally ill individual who obsessively collected radioactive material from smoke alarms and other sources. It was not really all that dangerous. None of the stuff he tried to build had any chance of working. In the end, he died of a drug overdose. It's a sad story of mental illness, that's it.
He didn’t do it because of some rational decisions which could be moderated by basic guidance.
There’s probably 10’s of thousands of kids who realized they could do something similar, but also realized it was a bad idea for any number of reasons. He came to a different conclusion.
Yep, any kid who obsesses about the periodic table of elements can figure out how to collect radioactive isotopes and attempt to build a simple nuclear reactor. Most don't, because they know better.
Imagine if some professor of nuclear engineering had pulled him aside and said, "Kid, listen, if you're going to do this, we need to have you do it safely and correctly. Let's have you assist at my lab."