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'Radioactive Boy Scout' Reportedly Passes Away At Age 39 (harpers.org)
A funeral notice quietly appeared on Tributes.com recently, announcing the death of David Charles Hahn. Though no cause of death was provided, when he was 17 Hahn "achieved some notoriety as a teenage Boy Scout with his attempt to build a nuclear reactor in his garden shed," remembers Slashdot reader braindrainbahrain:
His "reactor" ended when the EPA declared his backyard as a Superfund cleanup site due to hazardous levels of radiation. His story was captured in a Harper's magazine article, and later the book "The Radioactive Boy Scout" by Ken Silverstein. It was also a Slashdot topic...
Hahn had used materials from household products like lithium batteries, smoke detectors, and old radium clocks, according to Wikipedia, which adds that shortly after Hahn's lab was dismantled, he became an Eagle Scout.
Hahn had used materials from household products like lithium batteries, smoke detectors, and old radium clocks, according to Wikipedia, which adds that shortly after Hahn's lab was dismantled, he became an Eagle Scout.
I always enjoyed reading his story when I was younger, it was an inspiration. It showed what a determined kid could do given enough knowledge and motivation.
1000 times background measured directly over a source is really not that much. And the risks it presents is much lower than a huge majority of people seem to think. I know the number 1000 sounds like a lot, but 1000 times something very small can still be very small.
very low actual risk numbers and a long history of medical evidence regarding exposure at even higher levels not resulting in significant statistical increases
All that stuff about 'no statistically significant increase in risk' goes way out the window if he was careless and wound up taking in a significant amount of radioactive material (Or other poison) directly into his body.
The low risk occurs when the source of radiation is not directly inhaled or ingested.
He could have handled it so much better. Particularly as an adult. He kept on carrying on in the same manner he did as a child. Nuclear physics isn't about just randomly jamming things together, you do calculations and simulations to see how your idea will work. You determine your radiation hazards, you look up your material handling guidelines, you permit (okay, I'd forgive him for skipping that one, he'd never get approval), then you build.
As an adult he apparently wanted to invent an always-on nuclear lightbulb. Of course, we already have those with tritium-lit exit signs, but he had some design of his own in mind, something bright (and almost certainly obscenely dangerous)
It's times like this I wish I had a friend named 'The Professor'.
He was on my ship. I was a nuke. He was not, and he was not nearly smart enough to be one.
The Harper's story reminds me of something Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
The story paints a picture of a kid who appears to have little common sense or self-preservation instinct, and yet he improvised a procedure to reduce extract the thorium dioxide from lantern mantles and reduce it with lithium (from lithium batteries) to metallic thorium! And then... then he tries to reduce the radiation escaping into the neighborhood by using cobalt steel drill bits as "control rods" in his makeshift reactor... WTF?
I think his story may suggest that we underestimate how smart even not-particularly-smart people can be if they're sufficiently motivated. Maybe Or for a more extreme boost, obsessed.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Seriously, initially this seems like a cautionary tale on curiosity.
But if you look at this poor guy's later life, you'll see it for what it really is. Mental illness.
He simply couldn't let his fixation go. He's been busted for trying to accumulate radioactive materials via theft as an adult too.
Never mind the damage he's done. To others as well as himself... Never mind the other negative consequences he suffered.
Basically there should have been psychiatric intervention years ago.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!