The Boy and his Breeder Reactor

scubacuda writes "Here is an interesting tale about a Boy Scout who went a little too far in trying to achieve a merit badge in Atomic Energy. From smoke alarms, lantern components, the paint from radio clocks, and a little help from the Nuclear Regulator Commission, David Hahn attempted to build a nuclear reactor in his mother's shed. Regarding his excessive radioactive exposure, Hahn says, "I don't believe I took more than five years off my life."" While this is an oldish story (1998) it is not the pathetic self congratulatory lame princeton story.

Comments

That's all we need:

[newerbob]

Paramilitary children's groups that steal taxpayer money by representing themselves as private organizations when they're really CHURCHES building nuclear weapons.

The BSA is a Church for Boys. Even the Supreme Court said as much when they (rightly) said they can discriminate. I don't disagree with that one bit.

Howevever, all other TAX EXEMPT CHRURCHES aren't given special access to military installations, 1000s of acres of land, and the ablility to hire LOBBIESTS in WASHINGTON.

Re:That's all we need:

[newerbob]

I feel sorry for you. Your scoutmaster must have anally raped you as a child and you became gay.

Every time I read this story...

[Anonymous Coward]

A very disturbing image is generated in my mind, which is probably close to the truth:

We have here a story of a youth, estranged from both of his parents by divorce. He shuttles between the two families, each house on the opposite side of Detroit. Neither family seems to care much about his activities or schooling (and failures therein). Neither seems to understand or care about his activities. What they do understand, is that it "had to do with energy"...

He seems to have next to nothing for a social life. Scouts, probably a few friends in school. His girlfriend seems only "someone to be with", to fight the loneliness (hence the ton of letters to her) rather than a real "love affair" (not that I am expecting a romance here or anything, the relationship just seems to be a way to stave off the darkness that surrounds him).

With this kind of a life, most teenagers would, at this point, turn to "standard" forms of destructive behavior - drugs, gangs, violence. But not this guy. He attempts to hold on, going so far as to "appear" for most people outwardly normal, even earning his Eagle Scout badge. He has his darkness, though, and continues to spiral down . This culminates in his building up a highly radioactive "waste pit" in the backyard of one of his parent's house.

Neither family understands why (though it should be plain to see), and the mother tosses the lot of it (and she wasn't even wearing the apron) into the garbage, to eventually get down to the water table, or elsewhere. Still, I have this image of this kid, hallowed eye (to a point), making and stiring up "concoctions" for the point of building a breeder reactor in his backyard, knowing the dangers, taking some precautions (but not enough), and then only dismantling it partially (and storing it in the trunk of his car?!) and hiding the evidence. It makes you wonder what he was really doing to have that cop called on him - waiting for a friend doesn't look like "stealing tires" - so why were they called?

It is a dismal image - I can imagine him failing, and perhaps getting severely angry (perhaps from failing, perhaps from other reasons, with failure "igniting" the anger) - in a small "nervous breakdown" rage smashing things in his "lab" - damn the radiation! Damn the consequences!

But in the end - it seems like it is all about an individual whose family broke apart prematurely in his life, and he is trying to find the pieces.

You know what scares me?

He more than likely is still that scared, struggling youth, only in a mans body. He is an adult now, and he may have some semblance of a real life. But is that still just another cover, his adult Eagle Scout merit badge?

Look at what he is studying now. Look at the type of things he is studying. That's right, it isn't about homebrew nuclear reactors anymore.

It is about biotech now...

New article censoring preferences option?

[GameMaster]

I know I'll probably get moded "off topic" but the truth is it really is on topic.

What we need is a new option in Slashdot user preferences that doesn't show articles that have already been posted to the front page. That way people with a memory don't have to wade through the re-posts that happen frequently enough to be annoying. The most annoying part of it is that most of the time you have to spend a decent amount of time just trying to figure out if its an update on a previously posted topic or just another re-post of the exact same article.

Of course the much simpler way to handle it would be to force Slashdot editors to, at the very least, search the archives for any articles that contain the exact same URL linked to in the potential article. I doubt it would be very hard to code it in as a hard wired feature of slash that just automatically searches the body of all back news pieces. Then it could simply list off any articles that posses the same link making it really easy for an editor to see repeat posts before they make it to the front page. Heck even a manual search of the archives before posting every new article would be enough to catch most re-posts and it wouldn't take much time.

The only problem with the auto search idea is that there are plenty of times where commercial web sites like intel.com get linked to. In this case there could simply be a list of well know URLs (predominantly the base URL for corporations and other large organizations). Any links in a potential article that are included in the list could be excluded from the search.

This, of course, says nothing for the, oh so hard, cut-and-paste of all articles into MS Word (or any similar editor with a spell checker) that should also be mandatory for any web site that calls itself a news source. I find myself straying from the main point of the post now though.

This has been an opinion post sprinkled with a little bit of annoyance that this issue keeps getting ignored by the Slashdot editorial staff no matter how many times it gets mentioned in threads. It was not intended as a troll or as flame-bait.

-GameMaster