Radioactive Boy Scout, David Hahn, to earn
his merit badge in nuclear science, constructed
a breeder reactor in his back yard, inside
his mother's gardening shed.
His lab was torn down, when because of high
levels of radiation, the Environmental Protection
Agency, classified his mother's property as
a Superfund cleanup site.
How did David obtain radioactive fuel, and what happened to his health, after he was exposed to it.
At the age of 10, David Hahn’s grandfather
gave him as a gift, The Golden Book of Chemistry
Experiments.
The young boy purchased Bunsen burners and
test tubes.
When his friends were playing with firecrackers,
David was using his chemistry set to produce
nitroglycerin.
His parents were amazed by his scientific
curiosity, but they were troubled by occasional
explosions, which put holes in the walls of
his bedroom.
In the suburbs of Detroit, his mother exiled
the boy and his experiments, to the potting
shed, in the back yard of their home.
His father was worried that David was spending
too much time on his experiments.
In 1990, to divert the attention of his fourteen
year old son, he decided it was time for David
to join the Boy Scouts.
His dad was exceedingly proud, when it was
the highest achievement in the scouting organization,
to which his son aspired... the rank of Eagle
Scout.
To become an Eagle Scout, David would have
to earn 21 merit badges.
11 of these badges were mandatory, including
camping and swimming.
To earn the rest of his patches, the young
man could choose from dozens of other activities,
from astronomy to stamp collecting.
David Hahn decided to earn a merit badge,
in atomic energy.
He fulfilled some of the requirements, by
interviewing a hospital radiologist, and by
making a diagram demonstrating the process
of nuclear fission.
Despite the fact, that he often wore a respirator
mask to conduct his most recent experiments,
and that after working long hours in the shed,
David would sometimes discard his clothing...
his parents had no idea, that he was also
building a nuclear reactor, a few dozen feet
from the back door of their house.
But he needed nuclear fuel.
David wrote a letter to the director of isotope
production at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, or the NRC.
Posing as a physics teacher from Chippewa
Valley High School, where he was actually
enrolled as a student, he received professional
tips on which radioactive elements could sustain
a chain reaction, and from where he could
purchase small amounts of these elements,
for simple class experiments.
From common items, he harvested radioactive
material.
From old smoke detectors, he extracted the
element, americium-241.
He gathered Thorium from old lanterns, by
pulverizing their gas mantles.
Tritium was obtained from crossbow sights
that glow in the dark.
He bought an old clock whose numbers were
painted in radium.
Inside the clock itself, David found a full
bottle of radium paint.
He built his tiny reactor.
Then he irradiated himself, the shed, and
his neighborhood.
In 1994, when David was seventeen, he was
driving around in his dented old Pontiac,
trying to find a safe place to dispose of
nuclear waste, when he was pulled over by
the police.
He felt obligated to warn them, he had radioactive
material in his trunk.
It was sealed inside a rusty tool box, which
was padlocked, and wrapped with silver duct
tape.
This discovery would lead, to the dismantling
of the backyard shed by the EPA, and the loading
of its remains into thirty-nine sealed barrels,
which were removed, to a radioactive dump
facility in Utah.
After graduating high school, David Hahn enlisted
as a sailor in the US Navy.
He served honorably, aboard a nuclear-powered
aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise.
He was eventually discharged from the service,
on account of poor health.
He was only thirty-nine years old when he
passed away.
No one knows if the cause was radiation sickness.
When the NRC had offered to measure, the amount of radiation absorbed by his body, he turned them down.
