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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.
There's several references to it everywhere, here's another.
This same basic story was posted about a year ago. Hell, the dude who did it even made a post. Come on people.... Drink more coffee so your memory will be retained for more then an hour.
Jolt also works.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/06/0 3/0026226
Mozilla -> Netscape -> AOL -> AOLTW <- Time Warner <- CNN
;-)
No, I don't think that's a useful story
Actually, I just read it. It's still not a useful story.
--
E_NOSIG
And at the time I remeber the consensus was that he hadn't made any kind of reactor at all, all he had actualy managed to do was isolate a bunch of radioactive junk and produce a pile of low grade radioactive waste. No fission reaction had been accomplished, nothing useful had been done. Not much had been learned, except that if you quietly bang around in your shed no one will pay much attention until you blow something up or get busted by the cops.
That and work on his own personal Darwin award
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
This isn't a troll, or flamebait, or anything. It's fact.
The last time this was posted, there were a flurry of links and mentionings of it being fake. Mostly they dealt with the fact that there was no way the amount of materials he supposedly smuggled from antiques would be sufficient to do what he was doing.
It was quickly identified as a fake story, although if news sources keep posting it as fact who knows, people might actually believe it.
Regards,
levine
You said:
"He once appeared at a scout meeting with a bright orange face caused by an overdose of canthaxanthin, which he was taking to test methods of artificial tanning."
I reply:
I went to high school with Dave when this was going on, and I was in his scout troop as well.
I never saw him bright orange at a scout meeting, but I did see him looking like a carrot shortly after he graduated. He didn't get into artificial tanning until after he graduated.
Relax! With his methods, he would never have been able to create any fission chain reaction. Sure, his technic can be used to build a "dirty bomb" - but a nuke never. The hardest trick in making a nuke is extreme difficulty increasing the purity of Radioactive isotopes. And he would be dead long before the purity reached dangerous level (let alone it is very hard - one needs acre sized plants for diffusion or centrifuge and hundreds of megawatts of power and millions of gallons of water)
Now, the rumor I heard for how he was caught was the following:
He had to move his experiments somewhere besides that shed, so he filled the trunk of his car with the material. On his way to school, he had to drive over a railroad crossing. Apparently there was some sort of radiation sensor by the track, and it started tripping twice a day, always at the same time.
The other rumor I had heard, was that he had given up, and had given most of the radioactive material to a friend who wanted to keep experimenting shortly before he was raided.
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works well with Avantgo too
THE WORLD IS GOING TO END!!!! eventually.
This story has personal relevance for me. My brother and I were in the same Boy Scout troup as David Hahn, and went to high school with him. He's two years older than me, I believe, and one year younger than my brother. He briefly served as Senior Patrol Leader; I believe my Totin' Chit (knife certification card) was signed by him.
One of the things I've noticed about all the articles I've read about him, is that they seem to give him credit for too much competence. On more than one occasion he showed up at a scout meeting with his eyebrows missing and his face red and burned from something gone awry. He used to pull me aside and tell me that he had Americanium in his pocket, at which point I would tell him he was probably making himself sterile, which he would shrug off. This is not good science by any means.
He would ask my brother chemistry questions, and (after my brother stopped coming to meetings) he would ask me for advice about chemicals, reactions, nuclear power, etc (I, who was two years his junior and yet to take high school chemistry). We knew about some of his experiments, but in a lot of ways assumed he was exaggerating. And we didn't know the extent to which he had lied and swindled to obtain his supplies. We didn't know until we saw the report about the EPA on the news, cleaning up a backyard shed and thought, "Good God, that must be Dave..."
I've given several interviews with an author who was apparently working on a full length book on Dave at various times as an undergrad, but I don't know if the book ever saw the light of day. Between the EPA incident and his joining the navy, my dad and I ran into him at the local Kroger where he was a stock boy (or something). His skin color was bright orange. He was experimenting with artificial tanning, and babbled on in pseudo-science talk about trying to permanently modify his skin color. ?! And last I heard he was a helmsman on the carrier Enterprise (though that was a few years ago, now).
Several things frustrate me about this whole story:
1) That he still made Eagle Scout. The Board of Review for advancement in Rank is composed of senior leaders of the troop; they are supposed to judge a candidate and, if they aren't satisfied, can refuse him the rank if they find him not meeting character requirements, etc. (what with the lying, cheating, etc, one would think Dave did not). But politics on local and notional board levels has contributed to what I consider dilution of the award in more cases than this (note, I'm not an eagle scout myself, i'm just arguing on principle).
2) What he did was really, really stupid and dangerous. This is not an inspiring tale of a brilliant young man, but a cautionary tale of how a little knowledge and not much common sense can cause lots of trouble.
3)This gets publicity for years, but legitimate science by young people is often overlooked.
Sigh. I'll end my rant now. But I get frustrated everytime I see this story come up yet again.
-Wombat.
too dismayed for a sig.
(Dave, if you're somehow reading this, I'm sorry, but what you did was dumb)