Slashdot Mirror
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.
Why would Slashdot put this as news when it happened years ago and most of us remember it? I mean I'd be all for this story if it was new - but a magazine from 1998? What happened? Find a Harper's while at the doctor's office? Next up: a Slashdot story on the WTC bombing.
"This same basic story was posted about a year ago."
I wasn't a Slashdot visitor a year ago. I found the story mildly entertaining.
Stop acting like posting a story means another story doesn't get posted.
"Derp de derp."
"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."
"Kathy then forbade David from experimenting in her home." That means no more boy scout sleepovers okay David?
"Sure, they thought it was odd that David often wore a gas mask in the shed and would sometimes discard his clothing after working there until two in the morning, but they chalked it up to their own limited education."
"I never saw him turn green or glow in the dark,"
"He majored in metallurgy but skipped many of his classes and spent much of the day in bed or driving in circles around their block.". ???
The rules only state that you have to prevent yourself from breeding. With his exposure to that much radiation he may very well be a contestant.
Good grief!
I can't believe how difficult it can be to find an older article around this place!
- Slashdot -- June 2, 2001. Title: "Duct Tape"
- I remember posting another comment about David Hahn at a much later date, (and asking Pathwalker if he had any recent info) but I can't seem to find it! (Dammit.)
Slashdot's robots.txt file is comprehensively restrictive, so if I feed Google "David Hahn site:slashdot.org", I get nothing.Would you please release (every few months or perhaps annually) a complete archive of Slashdot on CD or DVD? I imagine a simple .tar of the database would be sufficient, as most of your users would be quite capable of handling (and searching) that format. Personally, I think raw articles (no slashboxes, sidebars, etc...) in HTML format would be very useful.
Since CD/DVD production is relatively inexpensive, this could potentially be a non-trivial source of revenue for /.
Alternatively, perhaps Google could be convinced to donate one of their search appliances? Since many of us are quite proficient and familiar with Google's operation, it would make searching our collective memory that much easier.
Further, if a donation from Google is not possible, there are likely many of us who would be willing to donate to a search appliance fund.
Please, PLEASE consider these (and any other!) options to improve Slashdot searching.
Sincerely,
Raetsel.
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
The Kid's name is Hahn! The same name as Otto Hahn, one of the forerunners of nuclear science. Here's a bio of Hahn.
Woops! He screwed up like the Germans did and did not realize that Carbon contains Boron, a powerful neutron absorber. Or did he?
Miller, a nuclear-savvy high-school friend in whom David had confided, warned him that real reactors use control rods to regulate nuclear reactions. Miller recommended cobalt, which absorbs neutrons but does not itself become fissionable.
Ieeee! Cobalt may suck down neutrons, but it does so by making Cobalt-60, a powerful gamma emitter with a five year half life. Not good, kids better to use borax.
The article over all is sinister and alarmist. While the author bettered himself by reading snippits of the Golder Book of Chemistry, the overall tone is that knowledge and should be controled like materials that can POTENTIALY be abused. The parents were at fault for alowing this to go on and not seeking help at the university, but the contamination produced was not great. Our here might not have realized that he had stepped into illegal or unhealthy concentrations. Overall, as the "garbage go the good stuff", there was very little stuff to he had. Most municpal dumps have radiation detectors for the protection of the public and workers. It's kind of a last step in the control of medical isotopes and what not; if the isotope is not controled by the state/federal regulator; if the isotope is lost by the hospital; if the isotope goes to Mexico and comes back; if the isotope is sold or disposed of and can't be found, the isotpe will make it's way to a dump and be found there. That the local dump did not alarm is reassuring. He could have really hurt himself by ingesting some of his work, and his set up was childish and silly, but it's doubtful he ever possed a real threat to his neighbors.
The sad part is that his tallents were not channeled properly, that he never was convinced of the need to study other foundation material like math, that today he is a simple sailor. It's good for the Navy to have such a bright fellow, but bad for the rest of us. At age 21, it's not too late for this man to be educated and made useful. He has more curiosity and energy than most people. Go back to school, David.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Any kid who is going to hit pure red phosphorous with a screw driver is taking a risk, but not a smart one.
Yes, he should have looked it up first. But did you never burn off your eyebrows with a chemistry set? It was only after I lost my eyebrows twice, a big chunk of hair once, and most of the hair on my legs once that I started taking extra precautions. You could say, "slow learner" but I'd just say it didn't really bother me until I was asked about it by my friends that I thought, oh, burning body bad. (I already had a scar on my chest from an accident at 2 and had enough scars from playing that a painless loss of hair was no biggie.)
The same goes for that kid who is willing to put others in danger by disabling large numbers of smoke detectors in public places.
Oh come on, you never took apart one fire detector to test your Geiger counter? He just got caught up in it because he had a tough family life and uninteresting school. You prolly got just as caught up in computers, it was just inherently safer.
You seem to stress on the fact that the guy should have been denied the award just because he stole a few small things and lied?
Give me a break! Tell me, would he have done this if he had direct access to these materials in the first place? I find it disgusting that you'd place more importance to such trivialities of character, rather than his scientific spirit.
In this context, this quote by HL Mencken comes to mind --
The value the world sets upon motives is often grossly unjust and inaccurate. Consider, for example, two of them: mere insatiable curiosity and the desire to do good. The latter is put high above the former, and yet it is the former that moves one of the most useful men the human race has yet produced: the scientific investigator. What actually urges him on is not some brummagem idea of Service, but a boundless, almost pathological thirst to penetrate the unknown, to uncover the secret.... His prototype is not the liberator releasing slaves, the good Samaritan lifting up the fallen, but a dog sniffing tremendously at an infinite series of rat-holes.
-- H. L. Mencken
The guy has to be more than just admired for the fact that with little or no resources, he's built something that's definitely worth commending.
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.
Huh? You know something? Any path that does not involve risk ultimately leads to stagnation. It's only the people who take risks, who are unafraid to break through the odds who help humanity progress.
You cannot hope to build a rocket without risking it crashing somewhere. If that's the case, then most of the world's greatest scientists are idiots by your scale.
If I didn't know better, I'd probably say you're jealous of this guy. Come on man! You're supposed to be an astrophysist (atleast that's what I gather from your site), you should know this of all people!!!
All said and done, he's one smart dude. Naive yes, and a little ignorant too, but one of the smarter ones with a creative streak.