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The Boy and his Breeder Reactor

Posted by chrisd on from the science-projects-that-explode dept.

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.

6 of 340 comments (clear)

  1. This? Again? Come on, he even posted a reply to /. by LWolenczak · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  2. Hey! look at this! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/06/0 3/0026226

  3. I read this a long time ago by Nf1nk · · Score: 5, Informative

    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
  4. Re:heh, heh by Pathwalker · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  5. Re:Fake. by RollingThunder · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sigh... others have shown ample evidence that this is legit. We need a "-1 wrong" moderation. I thought about giving you an Overrated, or a Flamebait, or a Troll, but none are right.

  6. Not fake. by Pathwalker · · Score: 5, Informative
    I went to high school with Dave when this was going on. (I graduated from Chippewa Valley High School in 1994). I can tell you that the following facts are true.
    • He was in Boy Scouts (I was in troop 371 with him)
    • He was always into strange experiments, from making thermite, to building large batteries to give people shocks.
    • At one point in high school, he became very interested in radioactive decay, and the reactions that can transform one isotope into another.
    • Shortly after that, he started showing off many giger counters, bits of metal with radiation symbols etched into them, and other items when we met for lunch.
    • He knew chemestry pretty well, although he was not always that careful. (he used to reclaim silver from discared film for extra money)
    • As we both messed around with electronics, I gave him a catalog from a slavage yard with crates of dozen of different items that had been left out in the rain. They were selling dead smoke detectors for really really cheap.
    • He brought in a opened Americum container from a smoke detector to lunch one day. At this point, I stopped sitting near him in class, and at lunch, and started calling him "Glow Boy".
    • About a month into my Freshman year at college, I got a phone call from him. He said that he had just been raided by the EPA and the NRC, and that he needed to know what the name of that salvage yard had been.

    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.