David Charles Hahn (born October 30, 1976), also called the "Radioactive Boy Scout" or the "Nuclear Boy Scout", is an American who attempted to build a homemade breeder nuclear reactor in 1994, at age 17. A Scout in the Boy Scouts of America, Hahn conducted his experiments in secret in a backyard shed at his mother's house in Commerce Township, Michigan.
While his reactor never reached critical mass, Hahn attracted the attention of local police when he was stopped on another matter and they found material in his vehicle that troubled them and he warned that it was radioactive. His mother's property was cleaned up by the Environmental Protection Agency ten months later as a Superfund cleanup site. Hahn attained Eagle Scout rank shortly after his lab was dismantled.
While the incident was not widely publicized initially, it became better known following a 1998 Harper's article by journalist Ken Silverstein. Hahn is also the subject of Silverstein's 2004 book, The Radioactive Boy Scout.
Hahn was a Boy Scout who was fascinated by chemistry and spent years conducting amateur chemistry experiments, which sometimes resulted in small explosions and other mishaps. He was inspired in part by reading The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments, and tried to collect samples of every element in the periodic table, including the radioactive ones. He later received a merit badge in Atomic Energy and became fascinated with the idea of creating a breeder reactor in his home. Hahn diligently amassed this radioactive material by collecting small amounts from household products, such as americium from smoke detectors, thorium from camping lantern mantles, radium from clocks and tritium (a neutron moderator) from gunsights. His "reactor" was a bored-out block of lead, and he used lithium from $1,000 worth of purchased batteries to purify the thorium ash using a Bunsen burner.
Hahn posed as an adult scientist or high school teacher to gain the trust of many professionals in letters, despite the presence of misspellings and obvious errors in his letters to them. Hahn ultimately hoped to create a breeder reactor, using low-level isotopes to transform samples of thorium and uranium into fissionable isotopes.
Although his homemade reactor never came anywhere near reaching critical mass, it ended up emitting dangerous levels of radioactivity, likely well over 1,000 times normal background radiation. Alarmed, Hahn began to dismantle his experiments, but a chance encounter with police led to the discovery of his activities, which triggered a Federal Radiological Emergency Response involving the FBI and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. On June 26, 1995 the United States Environmental Protection Agency, having designated Hahn's mother's property a Superfund hazardous materials cleanup site, dismantled the shed and its contents and buried them as low-level radioactive waste in Utah. However, his mother, fearful that she would lose her house if the full extent of the radiation were known, collected the majority of the radioactive material and threw it away in the conventional garbage, which officials did not know. EPA scientists believe that Hahn likely exceeded the lifetime dosage for thorium exposure, particularly since he spent large amounts of time in the small, enclosed shed with large amounts of radioactive material and only minimal safety precautions. Hahn refused medical evaluation for radiation exposure.
On August 1, 2007, Hahn was arrested in Clinton Township, Michigan, for larceny, in relation to a matter involving several smoke detectors, allegedly removed from the halls of his apartment building. His intention was to obtain americium, a radioactive substance, from the detectors. In his mug shot, his face is covered with sores which investigators claim are possibly from exposure to radioactive materials.
Crazy Kid didn't live too far from me, with all that's going on in the World, it would have been a B**** to be blown up you the neighbors nuclear reactor.
[This message has been edited by California Kid (edited 12-16-2014).]
I'd read about his childhood exploits and thought he was clearly an unbalanced individual. Sadly, it turned out he was, and apparently hasn't really gotten better. Keep taking your meds, there, pal.
FWIW, back in high school (late 1950s) I occasionally helped a friend who was intent on building a working cyclotron as a multi-year science project. Then, as now, the adults around us ... including our parents and science teachers ... were totally clueless and could provide no guidance, so we blundered along on our own. I was a lot more worried about radiation exposure than my friend, but thankfully we graduated before his project ever approached operational status. We even coined a phrase that is applicable to a lot of high school science projects: "It doesn't work, but it looks neat anyway!"
[This message has been edited by Marvin McInnis (edited 12-17-2014).]
We didn't stop with high school. 
