'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.

Comments

Scout?

[Anonymous Coward]

Check his former scout leaders for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Well shit.

[ArylAkamov]

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.

Re:Well shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

I also remember reading the story. My reaction was one of horror because of the extremely toxic substances this guy was obsessed with. And now it seems my horror has turned into reality. From what I recall about him several years ago, he was already in poor health.

Re:Well shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

you were inspired by a lunatic

Re: Well shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

His first story piqued my curiosity, but his second cemented my feelings he loved the limelight. Or at least, enjoyed the attention he garnered from his first endeavors.

Re:Well shit.

[JoeMerchant]

As we all are, constantly. Madame Curie knew what she was doing wasn't healthy, too.

Re:Well shit.

[PopeRatzo]

It showed what a determined kid could do given enough knowledge and motivation.

Yes, given the proper materials, a determined kid with Google and the willingness to not give a fuck could create a Superfund site.

In its last official act, the 114th Congress has passed a resolution putting the Radioactive Boy Scout's image on the new billion dollar bill, saying "Being able to create a Superfund site in your backyard is an inspiration to all Americans. The only thing better is creating a Superfund site in someone else's backyard. Or in a town that's mostly black people or Indians, because fuck them."

Re:Well shit.

[johanw]

I assume he should have read more articles about radiation poisoning and not swallowing alpha emitters.

Re:Well shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy was no Madame Curie. More like a reckless fool. The full dangers of radiation weren't well understood until perhaps the 50s or 60s. This guy really had no excuse, and was obviously reckless. Madame Curie lived in a time when nobody really suspected how dangerous this stuff was. For gods sake, women put radium covered painbrushes to sharpen the tip! And even then they didn't die of the radiation, they died of radium poisoning!

Re:Well shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

With enough ,iknowledge, one can achieve great things.

With enough motivation, one can achieve great awards. You know, like a Darwin award.

Re: Well shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Make America GLOW Again!

Re: Well shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

His first story piqued my curiosity, but his second cemented my feelings he loved the limelight. Or at least, enjoyed the attention he garnered from his first endeavors.

Ironically, that limelight had a rather radioactive glow about it...

Re:Well shit.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

He was the madman to her madam?

Re: Well shit.

[Cryacin]

Yes, radiation is often illustrated with a lime green.

Re:Well shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

As we all are, constantly. Madame Curie knew what she was doing wasn't healthy, too.

I don't recall Curie posing as a highschool science teacher.

Re: Well shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

A wreckless fool like all these pro athletes that know full well the dangers of various PED, cranial impact, long term stress on the body.

How about all the wreckless fool race car, truck and bike drivers?

Or maybe just all the damn wreckless fools eating a shitty diet, smoking or drinking a lot?

Re:Well shit.

[networkBoy]

Yes.

I was inspired by him as well, that I could do nearly anything I wanted... but also to apply substantially more caution to my endeavors.

FWIW he's only a year younger than me and I easily could have been him, except I was busy with tesla coils and such instead...

A reactor was seriously on my todo list, but generally more the farnsworth fusor design.

-nB

Re: Well shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Lern 2 spel.

Re:Well shit.

[RockDoctor]

At the time she did it, she knew that it was no more unhealthy than any other boiling up of tonnes of rock in fuming nitric acid. Which is not the healthiest of occupations, but not because of the radioactivity of fuming nitric acid.

Actually, radiologists who've since examined the case suggest that Marie Curie's fatal cancer was most likelt due to her medal-winning work as a volunteer X-ray operator during the Great War. (advertised as "The War to End War" without a word of irony. That time.) Those battlefield X-ray machines had no shielding for the operator, again because no one was aware of a hazard at the time. It wasn't until a decade or so later that the epidemiology started to show evidence of harm.

Re: Well shit.

[Synonymous Homonym]

The American government is an inspiration to all its citizens. Next we will hear from a kid that replicates the Tuskegee experiment.

all bout nothin

[Mr D from 63]

The only reason this was ever a story is public ignorance and tremendously skewed risk perception of radioactive exposure at these levels.

Re:all bout nothin

[Anonymous Coward]

If you were his neighbor would have the same opinion?

Re:all bout nothin

[Rei]

I've never seen an exact level, but it's been described as "well over 1000 times normal background radiation". That would mean "well over 2,4 sievert per year". No comments on exactly where a person had to be standing to receive that - assumedly in the shed right by the "reactor" ("target" would be a better description). You certainly wouldn't want to be sleeping there every night. But if you're in the next house over, no, it's probably pretty insignificant. Unless he had a fire or something and aerosolized it.

Still... just that radium paint alone, you wouldn't want the teen next door to have something like that...

Re:all bout nothin

[Mr D from 63]

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.

Re:all bout nothin

[Anonymous Coward]

So... it had nothing to do with him being DEAD AT FUCKING 39?!!!

Re:all bout nothin

[Mr D from 63]

Still... just that radium paint alone, you wouldn't want the teen next door to have something like that...

What if he had more dangerous toxins like those found in a can of insecticide or certain common petroleum products at his disposal? We wouldn't want that either would we.

Re:all bout nothin

[AchilleTalon]

And background radiation is already well below the maximum recommended dose per year.

Re:all bout nothin

[AchilleTalon]

The annual average effective dose from natural background is 2.4 mSv. However, when the article claim 1000 times normal background radiation, it doesn't say anything about the radiation type which is an important criteria to determine the effective dose. You need to qualifies the radiation, how much X-, gamma or beta radiation vs alpha, fission fragments and heavy particles vs neutrons vs high-energy protons. Doing a comparison in sievert is not appropriate. Where did you get this 1000 number?

Re:all bout nothin

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know. A friend of mine from school died at 17. Drowned--pulled under by a swift river current. Does that make water more deadly than nuclear reactors?

Re:all bout nothin

[smooth wombat]

He died at 39 because he was fucking?

What a way to go!

Re:all bout nothin

[JoeMerchant]

Yep, EPA is a hell of a lot tighter on things they can measure with a Geiger counter than they are for stuff like mercury, lead, PCBs, etc.

Re: all bout nothin

[Anonymous Coward]

anytime something like this comes up, the first thing folks always say is "did you know bananas are radioactive?"

did you know bananas are radioactive?

Re:all bout nothin

[Anonymous Coward]

Does that make water more deadly than nuclear reactors?

Nuclear reactors use water, that means nuclear reactors have RADIATION DANGER+WATER HAZARDS.

Re:all bout nothin

[Rei]

Alpha and neutron, mainly.

The 1000 number is from the original "radioactive boy scout" article and has been cited by a number of article since then.

Regardless, when you're dealing with "well over 2.4 sievert", it would be bad for you to be spending great amounts of time in that environment. Surely not what killed him, though. He's not going to get sores on his face like that just from having spent time near his "reactor" in the shed. That looks like small radiation ulcers, like he was getting material on his skin. Probably americium dioxide from his repeated smoke detector dissections. He was probably also inhaling and ingesting the stuff.

It's funny how on this site you see a policy of "overreact in the opposite direction" on a wide range of things. Just like there's a crowd here that responded to the negative hydrogen perception from the Hindenberg by taking a "hydrogen is harmless, hardly even burns!" stance, some seem to have responded to radiation panic with a "radiation is harmless, even for people who are opening up smoke detectors" attitude.

Re:all bout nothin

[Anonymous Coward]

The same place that the article said: "using the lithium and a bunsen burner to convert the thorium ash to Uranium". The wikipedia article.

This kid was not working safely. There is almost no doubt this shit was airborne.

Re:all bout nothin

[Ol Olsoc]

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.

The question of course, is what he was exposed to, how often, and did he ingest any of the radioactive matter. He was altready a bit careless, having OD'ed on canthaxanthin that he ingested as part of an experiment. He created an explosion of Red phosphorus n the basement of his house apparently not knowing that it was sensitive to shock, and he was pounding it with a hammer. So we have a young fellow that is remarkably careless.

The Americium from the smoke detectors, of which he stole a number of them - apparently 100 known. So most of that is excreted but the rest goes to the liver and one's nutsack if they happen to have one.

Thorium is fairly safe stuff, unless it is ingested, being an alpha emitter. Ingestion of the dust from one isn't so safe. He collected lantern mantles to collect the thorium they contained. Hahn used lithium from dismantled batteries to purify the thorium, using a Bunsen burner in the process. His standard of sanitation was not high.

Radium is another matter entirely about 20 percent of ingested radium makes its's way into the bones, and it is an alpha and gamma emitter. It's daughter element radon gas is also radioactive and causes cancer.

Tritium that he was going to use as a moderator, is also a radioactive beta emitter, but probably isn't/wasn't that big a deal. So it is very plausible that this young fellow ingested enough material to do himself physical harm from the radioactivity.

We'll never know the full extent of the radioactivity, because his mother threw most of his collected materials into the regular trash. She was fearful of her property value.

Re:all bout nothin

[Ol Olsoc]

Still... just that radium paint alone, you wouldn't want the teen next door to have something like that...

What if he had more dangerous toxins like those found in a can of insecticide or certain common petroleum products at his disposal? We wouldn't want that either would we.

I truly hope that you do not work in the nuclear industry, as you have a remarkably arrogant and dangerous attitude.

No, Mister D from 63, they are not an equivalent as you suggest.

Many radioactive elements are also chemically poisonous as well as radioactive. A bit of Uranium in one's lunch will take out your kidneys before the radiation does anything to you. A kid shouldn't be playing with radioactive materials nor your ridiculous insecticide comparison.

However, to take your opinion that somehow radioactivity is safe, and making grand sweeping statements to that effect and not even making reference to the type of radioactivity is/was involved, makes me feel quite safe that you don't know what you are talking about.

Re:all bout nothin

[Ol Olsoc]

The annual average effective dose from natural background is 2.4 mSv. However, when the article claim 1000 times normal background radiation, it doesn't say anything about the radiation type which is an important criteria to determine the effective dose. You need to qualifies the radiation, how much X-, gamma or beta radiation vs alpha, fission fragments and heavy particles vs neutrons vs high-energy protons. Doing a comparison in sievert is not appropriate. Where did you get this 1000 number?

No doubt from the rectum.

We had radium, Americium-241,Thorium, and tritium. So we have alpha, beta and gamma. Purification techniques performed in a small shed, and probably under woefully inadequate conditions. The likelihood of ingestion and inhalation of daughter element radon was very likely.

What is more, Hahn's mother was fearful of the radioactive element' being known would negatively impact her property value, so she gathered up what she could and threw it out in the trash. This was a remarkably scrrewed up family.

So the total extent of the radioactivity will never be known. Whether or not an autopsy will be performed on Hahn is not known either.

But almost certainly, the scraping of the radium clocks, as well as the Americium-241 from the smoke detectors, the purification of the thorium from the lantern mantles ( apparently with nitric acid) the not always careful lad almost had to be dosing himself severely with radiation as well as regular chemical poisons. I shudder to think of just the nitric acid exposure.

And 30 some years is about right for the delay between exposure and problems.

Re:all bout nothin

[Anonymous Coward]

The issue of ingestion of radiological hazards is why I get irritated when people try and talk of the danger in terms of 'chest x-rays' and 'banana equivalent doses'

Re: all bout nothin

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they are not, meaning you can't find a banana that emits statistically different amount from the background, unless maybe you manage to grow one near that reactor in Chernobyl.

We test some every year (students invariably bring them to our nuclear physics lab), and we've never seen anything but the background.

Re: all bout nothin

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Do they microwave them before they sell them?

Re:all bout nothin

[Ol Olsoc]

the purification of the thorium from the lantern mantles ( apparently with nitric acid)

My mistake. He used the nitric acid - which he made himself - in a not so successful experiment to extract Uranium from pitchblende. the Lithium was used to purify the thorium form the ashes of the mantles.

Re:all bout nothin

[Ol Olsoc]

The issue of ingestion of radiological hazards is why I get irritated when people try and talk of the danger in terms of 'chest x-rays' and 'banana equivalent doses'

Its irresponsible and only exposes the claimant's ignorance. There is a world of difference between an alpha emitter in the hand, and one in the gut or lung.

But we have armchair experts in here who make sweeping claims that show their ignorance. Every bit as much ignorance as those who cower in fear at the mention of radioactivity.

Re:all bout nothin

[arth1]

I've never seen an exact level, but it's been described as "well over 1000 times normal background radiation".

The thing about "normal" is that it isn't very normal. It varies widely, from areas with almost no background radiation, to areas with very high levels. People who live in pitchblende areas deal with higher levels, every day, 24/7.

Yes, walk a few feet away, and radiation from radioactive sources drops radically, so as you say, the low energy "reactor" next door has absolutely no effect - you probably wouldn't even be able to measure it. The radiation levels from living next door to a powerplant for a year is comparable to living two days in Denver.

Sure, radioactivity is dangerous. So is asbestos, lead, mercury and many other things. But common for them is that the level of hysteria is far more dangerous than minimal exposure.

Re:all bout nothin

[Anonymous Coward]

Just you wait until January!

Re:all bout nothin

[lxs]

I'm glad that nature strictly adheres to health and safety guidelines.

In most places anyway.

Re:all bout nothin

[lxs]

Thorium is an alpha emitter, but it has a couple of beta emitters in its decay chain so real thorium samples will emit both alpha and beta radiation.

Re:all bout nothin

[Anonymous Coward]

And the maximum recommended dose per year is selected from 1% of what has been statistically linked to harmful.
There are countries with a higher background radiation so they have selected other limits for maximum recommended dose.

Re:all bout nothin

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Isn't it weird that on one end of the safety scale, the EPA can be overly cautious, and probably rightfully so when it comes to radiation.

On the other end of the safety scale, cigarettes for some fucking stupid reason remain a legal product.

Re: all bout nothin

[ChrisMaple]

Bananas are relatively high in potassium (0.35%). In nature, 0.01% of potassium is unstable with a half-life of a billion years. Not biologically significant.

By way of contrast, granite is 5% potassium.

Re: all bout nothin

[Anonymous Coward]

It's worth noting that if Grand Central Station were a nuclear power plant, it would be shut down for exceeding the maximum allowable annual dose of radiation for employees.

Re: all bout nothin

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming you meant Grand Central Terminal. The other one is a post office.

Re:all bout nothin

[Anonymous Coward]

>On the other end of the safety scale, cigarettes for some fucking stupid reason remain a legal product.

That's because they're different. You probably don't get how so let me explain. Radiation is invisible. If I were to leave something radioactive in your yard, you'd slowly get poisoned from it and wouldn't know what's up until you see a doctor. Radiation will also be released practically forever when we consider the human lifespan, assuming you choose something with a reasonably long half-life.

Cigarettes, however, don't poison when they're not in use. Also, when they're in use, they emit rather obvious smoke. Since everyone knows cigarettes are toxic, they avoid that smoke and it's not considered reasonable (anymore) to release said smoke anywhere near others that aren't joining in voluntarily.

Banning something simply because it's unhealthy without considering how easy/hard it is to harm someone who is not involved, and more importantly, how obvious it is to the third party that they're being involved is why Trump got elected. We're all tired of your shit.

Re:all bout nothin

[Anonymous Coward]

I read this as "...is why I get irradiated when people..."

Re:all bout nothin

[Anonymous Coward]

Rectum, darn near killed him.

Re:all bout nothin

[Anonymous Coward]

You have two representations of fact that I have not seen elsewhere. One is that his mother threw his items in the trash. The other that he used stolen detectors. As I have seen the story presented, he may have committed fraud in order to acquire the detectors mainly to mask his age, but he did not steal them. The other is you assertion that his mother threw out "most" of his items. The story as presented is that he was pulled over by a policeman and some items were found that led to the complete excavation of the family's yard. Now perhaps his mother threw out items prior to the discovery by authorities.

Re:all bout nothin

[norweeg]

1995 was 20 years ago, not 30

Re:all bout nothin

[Ol Olsoc]

Rectum, darn near killed him.

Ahh, the ending of the best joke ever. Thanks for the laugh!

Re:all bout nothin

[Anonymous Coward]

He created an explosion of Red phosphorus n the basement of his house apparently not knowing that it was sensitive to shock, and he was pounding it with a hammer. So we have a young fellow that is remarkably careless.

You have a young fellow who's PARENTS were remarkably careless. I too pounded stuff with hammers when I was around 16 year old. I too liked fire, chemical experiments, playing with electricity. Fortunately, I had a father who did these things with me, bought me those electrical and chemical play sets for youngsters, and generally kept me from pounding stuff that would cause more than a mild shock, a bruise or a blister from a hot contact.

Re:all bout nothin

[Rei]

He didn't exactly have an idyllic childhood. His mother was schizophrenic, seriously in cloud-cookoo land until she was hospitalized and put on heavy medication. It mostly controlled it after that, but she became very inattentive. She was also alcoholic. His parents divorced when he was a child. As a teen, he initially did most of his work at his father and stepmother's place, but as they became increasingly concerned by the danger level of his experiments, they began cracking down and disposing of any chemicals they found. So he switched his base of operations to his mothers' place.

Re:all bout nothin

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have. My house still has lead paint. :)

(One pipe still has asbestos, too!)

Re: all bout nothin

[Anonymous Coward]

gee, that is counter to my experience. I have tested bananas as well, and I find them to be above background (always) more than enough to notice.

Re:all bout nothin

[careysub]

No you have never seen an exact level and this whole story is greatly overblown (because it is so darn colorful, with a catchy title).

The entire account known to the public is based solely on the book "The Radioactive Boy Scout" by Ken Silverstein. The only reason why anyone has ever heard of this case is because of Silverstein. No statements about actual radiation levels are found anywhere in the book, what you are reporting is pure rumor. And if you actually read the book several things become clear.

First, there is little physical evidence for Hahn's claims. His whole "reactor" assembly, such as it was, was reportedly thrown in the garbage and disposed of without any outside party ever examining it, so his claims about it are without any substantiation.

Second, Hahn was a rather unstable character, and was prone to lying and stealing (by self-confession) so his accounts must be viewed with some skepticism. The whole affair came to law enforcement attention because of Hahn acting strangely late at night in public, drawing the attention of police, whereupon he started to tell them his bizarre tale. They took him at his word, called in the Feds, and once the investigative snowball starts rolling it tends to keeps rolling.

Third, yes, the EPA did come and dismantle his shed in hazmat suits, but the use of such suits is standard procedure so it in itself proves nothing about any actual hazard, and indeed the fact they did it all also does not prove any substantial hazard - CYA is a real thing. The incident itself does not show up as a significant action in their records (in fact the incident cannot be located at all in on-line government regulatory actions for that time and area).

Fourth Silverstein had a book to sell, and he flogs the story mercilessly. Most of the claims made about his case are actually made by Silverstein himself, which he puts into the mouths of people he interviews by asserting things without evidence (other than Hahn's questionable word), and getting them to discuss it based on the premise that what Silverstein tells them is true. Thus the story gets a veneer of having verification which it actually lacks. There is basically no corroboration available for Silverstein's (or Hahn's) claims.

Re:all bout nothin

[careysub]

Addendum: another thing that stands out is how ignorant Hahn was, and remained, about the basics of the relevant physics.

Silverstein is easily impressed by this "precocious" kid (IIRC, actually 17 when he got himself busted). But if you were ever a precocious kid yourself, interested in science (as many people who read this site undoubtedly are) then the account is not at all impressive. Hahn remains woefully misinformed to the very end, apparently never really reading a single good text on the subject (like the ubiquitous and excellent Sourcebook on Atomic Energy by Glasstone found in libraries everywhere).

Re:all bout nothin

[Ol Olsoc]

He created an explosion of Red phosphorus n the basement of his house apparently not knowing that it was sensitive to shock, and he was pounding it with a hammer. So we have a young fellow that is remarkably careless.

You have a young fellow who's PARENTS were remarkably careless. I too pounded stuff with hammers when I was around 16 year old. I too liked fire, chemical experiments, playing with electricity.

I did as well. One of my favorite Christmas gifts was a big Chemistry set - and this was back in teh day where they put real chemicals in them, not just vinegar and baking soda. I made a lot of interesting stuff. I even had my own little outbuilding to use as a chemistry shed. But I did get some guidance and limits. I did adhere to them as well. I quickly understood radioactivity and it's ability to reach out and touch you. Its all just safety with chemicals.

In this fellows family, there were some major problems with his mother and also with him. Both were diagnosed Scizophrenic and at least he was diagnosed bipolar. What a sad mess.

Re: all bout nothin

[dpidcoe]

Is your lab made out of granite or on the top of a mountain or something?

Re: all bout nothin

[careysub]

No, they are not, meaning you can't find a banana that emits statistically different amount from the background, unless maybe you manage to grow one near that reactor in Chernobyl.

We test some every year (students invariably bring them to our nuclear physics lab), and we've never seen anything but the background.

True (I just checked this my Ludlum 2221). A banana has only about 0.4 g of potassium in it which would produce 11 decays per second. It would be difficult to pick this out of background. But if you test a jar of NuSalt, or other potassium chloride salt substitute, which contains 100 g of potassium or so, the radiation is very easy to detect.

Re:all bout nothin

[careysub]

You have two representations of fact that I have not seen elsewhere. One is that his mother threw his items in the trash. The other that he used stolen detectors. As I have seen the story presented, he may have committed fraud in order to acquire the detectors mainly to mask his age, but he did not steal them.

He both practiced fraud and theft at different times. The account is in Silverstein's book.

The other is you assertion that his mother threw out "most" of his items. The story as presented is that he was pulled over by a policeman and some items were found that led to the complete excavation of the family's yard. Now perhaps his mother threw out items prior to the discovery by authorities.

That is more or less correct. What Hahn had in the trunk of his car appears to be the materials from smoke detectors and gas mantles - americium and thorium. It was months before the shed was investigated.

Re:all bout nothin

[careysub]

Another addendum: what the book does report is the radioactivity of a few specific items found at the shed. The most radioactive was a vegetable can with a count rate of 50,000 CPM. Definitely radioactive, but to put this in context uranium glazed Fiestaware, which was sold to the public to eat off of as late as 1972, emits up to 30,000 CPM and yes, you can buy one of these for $39 today if you like.

The next most radioactive item was 6,000 CPM, one at 3,000, one at 1,500, and nothing else more than the low hundreds, not very radioactive at all.

Re:all bout nothin

[Anonymous Coward]

Cigarettes are not under the jurisdiction of the EPA and the FDA was specifically barred from regulating cigarettes kind of like how no grant money can be used to study gun violence and ways to reduce it.

Re:all bout nothin

[Ol Olsoc]

1995 was 20 years ago, not 30

1995?

Re:all bout nothin

[Ol Olsoc]

You have two representations of fact that I have not seen elsewhere. One is that his mother threw his items in the trash.

From the Harper's article at http://harpers.org/archive/199... P "David’s mother, alerted by Ken and Kathy and petrified that the government would take her home away as a result of her son’s experiments, had ransacked the shed and discarded most of what she found, including his neutron gun, the radium, pellets of thorium that were far more radioactive than what the health officials found, and several quarts of radioactive powder. “The funny thing is,” David now says, “they only got the garbage, and the garbage got all the good stuff.”"

The other that he used stolen detectors.

From the same article: "Another year, David was expelled from camp when—while most of his friends were sneaking into the nearby Girl Scouts’ camp—he stole a number of smoke detectors to disassemble for parts he required for his experiments. “Our summer vacation was screwed up when we got a call telling us to pick David up early from camp,” his stepmother recalls with a sigh.

As well, he was arrested in 2007 for stealing smoke detectors.

As I have seen the story presented, he may have committed fraud in order to acquire the detectors mainly to mask his age, but he did not steal them. The other is you assertion that his mother threw out "most" of his items. The story as presented is that he was pulled over by a policeman and some items were found that led to the complete excavation of the family's yard. Now perhaps his mother threw out items prior to the discovery by authorities.

Sometimes we are presented with innacurate stories.

Re:all bout nothin

[sl3xd]

The tools he used in his experiments were recovered, and they were contaminated with Thorium, Americium, and Radium.

Additionally, over fifty foil-wrapped cubes with Thorium powder were recovered.

They were disposed of at a radioactive waste dump in the Utah Desert.

The toolbox and powder was the big concern - he may have been overstating what he did, but it wasn't a total lie, and the Feds knew it.

Re:all bout nothin

[Mr D from 63]

I did not draw any equivalences, only a comparison which is valid from a risk perspective. I also did not say radioactivity is 'safe', but we all know low levels are safe relative to risks we welcome every day like crossing the street or getting some sun exposure.

I also said nothing about the nuclear industry nor would I suggest the change their practices or lower their standards. They have very conservative standards and that has served them well.

So, your attempt to twist my words and scare with sweeping statements of your own simply don't match reality;

As for the 'bit of uranium in the lunch pail' comment, you demonstrate the ignorance that many possess. Natural uranium is pretty much harmless, even ingested.

Re:all bout nothin

[Mr D from 63]

Even for ingestion or radium though, it is levels that matter. That's the part people miss. Just to say it 'causes cancer' is meaningless without levels. To say it 'makes its way to the bones' sounds scary until you realize how much is actually required to significantly increase your risk of cancer. Sunlight causes cancer as well. The point is that risk perception of the public regarding radioactivity is tremendously skewed. Mostly due to FUD and much due to ignorance.

Re:all bout nothin

[Ol Olsoc]

My comment still stands, I have not met nor worked with any NucE's with your callus attitude. You said what you said, and that tells us much.

I certainly would not work around you with radioactive materials, as you draw a safety conclusion from residual radiation, and from only a small remainder of what wasoriginally there, as well as th exposure to the young man in a shed.

So now allow me to make comments on quoted material that you wrote:

"The only reason this was ever a story is public ignorance and tremendously skewed risk perception of radioactive exposure at these levels.

So this should not have been reported at all? Tell me what the radiation levels were inside the shed. Tell me what they were before Hahn's mother removed the neutron gun - it's contents, the radium and thorium pellets. Ad David Hahn related, The funny thing is, they only got the garbage, and the garbage got all the good stuff.”

Your assesment that this was still a story that should have not been reported?

You wrote:

What if he had more dangerous toxins like those found in a can of insecticide or certain common petroleum products at his disposal? We wouldn't want that either would we.

If he was contaminating the shed with toxins to the point that it needed severe cleanup measures, then the situation would be the same. If he had a bag of say, Paris green and a bag of radium, that kind of makes your attempt at deflection a little awkward. HEalth hazards are health hazards.

Now it isn't likely at all that any normal worker would ever put radium in a bag, but careless ones like Mr Hahn were not above doing seriously stupid things.

What is more, you have the big benefit of hindsight. Since you consider this as "The only reason this was ever a story is public ignorance and tremendously skewed risk perception of radioactive exposure at these levels." I guess you would have just charged right in.

So do you have a good assessment of how this case was mishandled, and how you would have handled it?

Meanwhile, you bear a striking attitude to the table that was probably shared by the late Mister Hahn.

Re:all bout nothin

[Ol Olsoc]

Even for ingestion or radium though, it is levels that matter. That's the part people miss. Just to say it 'causes cancer' is meaningless without levels. To say it 'makes its way to the bones' sounds scary until you realize how much is actually required to significantly increase your risk of cancer. Sunlight causes cancer as well. The point is that risk perception of the public regarding radioactivity is tremendously skewed. Mostly due to FUD and much due to ignorance.

The person displaying the most ignorance here is you Mr D From 63! Why are you so interested in levels when you first quoted 1000 times background as no big deal, without any reference to alpha beta or gamma radiation.

Sunlight causes cancer as well.

That you even try the ridiculous deflecting move of equating Sunshine with Radium show either exceptional ignorance, or exceptional misunderstanding or plain old dumb malice. It's like arguing my point with my point. Ionizing radiation causes cancer so you try to refute it with another ioniozing radiation causes cancer deflection. But it doesn't equate in the least. Good day sir. You might have learned something, but you choose to already know everything.

Re: all bout nothin

[Anonymous Coward]

Try Brazil nuts.

Re:all bout nothin

[Mr D from 63]

I never said the story should not have been reported. Why you claim I did is a better question. It seems people like you have to make things up to make a point. I simply said the only reason it is a big deal to many people is the greatly skewed risk perception of the public and reporters. You've said nothing to indicate your risk perception is any better.

Re:all bout nothin

[Mr D from 63]

You are basically saying nothing. Tell me, what do you think the increase in risk is being exposed to 1000 times background radiation constantly for, say, a week? I bet you haven't the foggiest notion.

Once again, you make things up. I never refute that ionizing radiation can cause cancer. It can. I was talking about the risks from the levels of exposure we are discussing. You cannot seem to separate risk from absolution.

Did you know that the risk of skin cancer from sunlight is much higher than health risks from radiation exposure for workers at Fukushima who've been there the entire duration of that event? In fact, it is orders of magnitude greater.

Re: all bout nothin

[Anonymous Coward]

My memory is that the exposure would take twenty years off his life. He ended up in my the navy for a time. You can understand the military wanted to know what the raiation did to him.

Re:all bout nothin

[norweeg]

He died this year at 39. Article said he was ~15 when this happened. That would have been ~20 years between exposure and symptoms, not 30 and would have taken place in around 1995, which the article actually cites as the time period. Just correcting your math

Wasn't looking well

[Rei]

He wasn't looking well the last tine he was arrested for... wait for it... stealing once again to try to get material for a new reactor.

He ended up being hospitalized for bipolar disorder and paranoid schizophrenia, and had been on medication for schizophrenia ever since. His mother was also schizophrenic. He led an interesting life...
   

Re:Wasn't looking well

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like AIDS.

Re:Wasn't looking well

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like skin picking.

Re:Wasn't looking well

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like shrapnel wounds.
 

Re:Wasn't looking well

[AchilleTalon]

From the Fox News' article:

'Police say that Hahn's face was covered with open sores, possibly from constant exposure to radioactive materials.'

Re:Wasn't looking well

[AchilleTalon]

I would not give you an informative rating since your comment is incomplete. You should have linked the article with the picture and not only the picture. Also, where did you get the information about bipolar disorder? Any reference?

Re:Wasn't looking well

[Anonymous Coward]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn

Re:Wasn't looking well

[Lunix Nutcase]

Looks like he was on his way to becoming Deadpool. Seems he never quite got that healing factor.

Re:Wasn't looking well

[Ol Olsoc]

Smells Like Teen Spirit.

Re:Wasn't looking well

[Ol Olsoc]

He wasn't looking well the last tine he was arrested for...

Interesting. The lad looks a little like this fellow from Nagasaki http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com...

Could be a coincidence of course. The only thing close I could think of would be meth issues.

Re:Wasn't looking well

[Anonymous Coward]

He looks like a heavy methamphetamine user.

Re:Wasn't looking well

[Anonymous Coward]

His Mom committed suicide about a year after the first kerfuffle.

Sad, damaged family got through the mental health safety net.

And I speak as one who that safety net saved, so don't get me wrong here.

Tragedy.

Re:Wasn't looking well

[AJWM]

I blame it all on Marvel comics. Poor dude was trying to come up with some radiation-induced superpower, like Spiderman, the Fantastic Four or the Hulk.

Re:Wasn't looking well

[93 Escort Wagon]

'Police say that Hahn's face was covered with open sores, possibly from constant exposure to radioactive materials.'

I thought most Slashdotters were very much in favor of open sores.

Re:Wasn't looking well

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.hiroshima-spirit.jp/en/museum/w17-2.jpg

Re:Wasn't looking well

[Anonymous Coward]

If I had to guess, Radioactive materials weren't his only addiction... google "Meth Bugs".

Re:Wasn't looking well

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely. According to official science that I just made up, you are 9452 times more likely to die from complications of meth abuse than you are ionizing radiation created in a DIY home brew nuclear reactor. At least those statistics are valid in the USA, the only country that matters. What amazes me is that we are not more worried about all meth and the drugs that are killing more black people than Donald Trump has killed in his whole life. I guess black lives only matter when they are taken by whites, not when they are being taken by South American narco cartels.

My theory is that the politicians and media class are really the men behind all the illicit drug trades. All the drugs coming from Mexico are enriching the lives of the political class. So we will continue to get bullshit stories about presidential blowjobs and gender inequality, while our future is ripped out from under us.

Say no to Drugs and the politicians / Law enforcement / gangs that profit from them.
Say YES to homebrew nuclear reactors.

Re:Wasn't looking well

[thomn8r]

Somehow I GNU that was coming...

Re:Wasn't looking well

[Anonymous Coward]

From the Fox News' article:

'Police say that Hahn's face was covered with open sores, possibly from constant exposure to radioactive materials.'

Whenever I want a medical opinion, I ask the police.

Re:Wasn't looking well

[Anonymous Coward]

But at least it's not lupus.

Re:Wasn't looking well

[Anonymous Coward]

He led an interesting life.

More like a half-life, really...

Re:Wasn't looking well

[Anonymous Coward]

'Police say that Hahn's face was covered with open sores, possibly from constant exposure to radioactive materials.'

I thought most Slashdotters were very much in favor of open sores.

more like he is a meth tweaker and this was his obsession while tweaking

Re:Wasn't looking well

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like he may have also been into some meth chemistry...

Re:Wasn't looking well

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is characteristic of methamphetamine use which he may have been making to "pay for a new reactor" and/or may have dipped into (you know, quality testing) and become a meth addict.

quietly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can someone please explain to me how a notice can loudly appear on Tributes.com, as opposed to the "A funeral notice quietly appeared on Tributes.com" listed here? Why is everything posted on /. listed as having happened quietly? Do you people need a text message or something sent to you every time anything happens to make you think it happened loudly? Enough with the quietly on everything already! We now return you to your regularly scheduled cry-in at your over-rated Ivy League school.

Re:quietly?

[cheater512]

It wasn't written in all caps?

Re:quietly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why isn't how about you lick my balls, son?

Confirmation?

[alzoron]

All I see is the short obituary on Tributes.com that anyone could have posted. No links to a news story or anything.

Re:Confirmation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks legit: http://www.wasikfuneralhome.com/obituaries/David-Hahn-2/

"no cause of death was provided"

[hcs_$reboot]

So he died from what? Traffic accident?

Re:"no cause of death was provided"

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the fact that he has been apparently working with radioactive materials for at least a decade (arrested in 2007 for trying to steal smoke detectors for their Americium) without a single thought to safety, and considering he has turned down medical treatment for radiation exposure numerous times I'd say he died of complications resulting from exposure (and lack of treatment) to radioactive materials. His mugshot from 2007 (which someone posted above) is dreadful and definitely indicates a lack of medical treatment. Whether or not radiation exposure can cause such facial sores is beyond my knowledge (and you're all capable of googling just as well as I am) but I would say its not unreasonable to assume his amateur experimentation with radioactive materials was at least partially to blame for his rather premature death.

Re: "no cause of death was provided"

[Anonymous Coward]

It causes cell death and the cells that were likely exposed the most on his body were his hands and this head so I'd say it's a safe bet to just assume those open sores are his epidermis dying

Re:"no cause of death was provided"

[ShooterNeo]

Yeah, probably. He could have inhaled or ingested a bunch of alpha or beta emitters. Colon cancer, lung cancer, take your pick.

Re:"no cause of death was provided"

[Mr D from 63]

Considering the fact that he has been apparently working with radioactive materials for at least a decade (arrested in 2007 for trying to steal smoke detectors for their Americium) without a single thought to safety, and considering he has turned down medical treatment for radiation exposure numerous times I'd say he died of complications resulting from exposure (and lack of treatment) to radioactive materials.

What you aren't considering is the very low actual risk numbers and a long history of medical evidence regarding exposure at even higher levels not resulting in significant statistical increases that a normal person would consider risk significant. If there was a 1 in 100,000 increase in the chance that this person would get cancer before he died, than in all likelihood your assumption is incorrect.

Re:"no cause of death was provided"

[Anonymous Coward]

Any sources to back up the claim that 10 years or more of exposure to "well over 1,000 times normal background radiation" wouldn't cause the kind of damage he apparently suffered from (going by the mugshot)? Without a definite cause of death being stated it could be a wide range of illnesses that can come about from long-term exposure to radioactive materials. And as another poster mentioned above he could have inhaled some of the material which would drastically change how much radiation is required to cause cancers or other ailments. Since you seem to have direct knowledge of scientific studies that refute this line of logic I would be very interested in reading any sources you have.

Re:"no cause of death was provided"

[Osgeld]

Cancer is only one way to die from radiation exposure

Re:"no cause of death was provided"

[mysidia]

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.

Re: "no cause of death was provided"

[Anonymous Coward]

Your wife loves investing my alpha emitters.

Re:"no cause of death was provided"

[swalve]

A lot of those things are also just plain ol' poisonous.

Re:"no cause of death was provided"

[hcs_$reboot]

That's my point. Since no cause of death is provided, why should we automatically assume he died from the effects of radiation exposure?

Re:"no cause of death was provided"

[braindrainbahrain]

One reason I posted this was to see if anyone had further information. He was taking drugs for a mental health condition and may have had a meth addiction at one time. Although I would immediately suspect radiation, any of those other things could have been the cause of his demise.

Re:"no cause of death was provided"

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

I think the correct phrase would be "death from long-term exposure to radioactive materials", which could be various poisonings, cancer, etc. He probably had more than one thing wrong and they all contributed to his early death.

Re:"no cause of death was provided"

[ckatko]

If I get radiation exposure and develop a superpower of "3 penises", you can bet your sweet apple that I'm gonna die from simultaneous orgasms long before the cancer gets me.

Re:"no cause of death was provided"

[Mr D from 63]

Even ingested risks, albeit higher than external exposure, are much lower than most people imagine.

Re:"no cause of death was provided"

[Mr D from 63]

Cancer is only one way to die from radiation exposure

Yes, but please discuss those other ways in the context of this article and discussion. Cancer is by far the most likely health impact from most types of radioactive exposure that are not massively acute. Other risks are much lower, so my point stands.

Re:"no cause of death was provided"

[Osgeld]

except for the obvious sores on his face (and presumably other parts of body)

Re:"no cause of death was provided"

[Mr D from 63]

And why on earth would you assume those sores came from exposure to radiation? Any scientific basis at all for that?

Re:"no cause of death was provided"

[Anonymous Coward]

How's that, you only have two hands?

HIV

[Anonymous Coward]

Or the HIVe MIND aka the Catholic Church that all the Slashdonggers crucify about. OOooohh, religion, OOh, genocidal maniac globalist puppet Hitlery Rottingcrotch Clinton. Yeah, HIV emanates like....

Bend up and smell my anal vapor
Your face is my toilet paper

ANAL VAPORS FOR PRESIDENT 2016.

Re: HIV

[Anonymous Coward]

He's going to have to shoot for the 2020 election I'm afraid

He could be the icon for

[fredrated]

"Don't try this at home".

Re:He could be the icon for

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, "Never Ever Do This At Home" missed the radioactivity in all their home testing.

Was his real name Homer?

[Anonymous Coward]

His alias was "Simpson"

Lesson learned...

[RyanRife8866]

Lesson learned...don't build a nuclear reactor in your backyard....do it in a friend's backyard.

Re:Lesson learned...

[rpstrong]

No, you do it in your mother's back yard. His father and step-mother (whom he lived with) wouldn't allow it in their home, causing him to shift his efforts to his mom's shed.

Radiation is like shrapnel

[Beeftopia]

I don't think people fully appreciate radiation (cloud chamber with uranium): https://imgur.com/r/woahdude/g...

Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

So now imagine being exposed to that in larger doses for an extended period of time. I have no idea what killed this fellow, but certainly playing with something that's constantly generating tiny, invisible shrapnel might have had something to do with it.

Golf manor superfund site

[nimbius]

this may also have been the cheapest superfund site taxpayers had to clean up, as it required removal and burial of the shed at just $60,000.

Re:Golf manor superfund site

[Anonymous Coward]

It was the cheapest to clean up because they never cleaned up the larger part of the contamination - his mother put that in the ordinary trash to be picked up and sent to wherever it was sent....

Re:Golf manor superfund site

[Anonymous Coward]

Also his mom had already thrown out lots of the radioactive material before the EPA showed up. (In an attempt to avoid having the house repossesed by the government due to being a radioactive dumping ground)

Rest in Peace

[quax]

If if misguided I couldn't help but affectionally admire him.

Re:Rest in Peace

[Rei]

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)

Re:Rest in Peace

[barakn]

So you're not sure if you are misguided or not?

Re:Rest in Peace

[Anonymous Coward]

He wasn't rational; don't you get that?

It isn't that he was insane and on meds at the end, it's that
he was insane and NOT on meds while he was doing most of this stuff.

It all made complete sense to him, but not to anybody else, because it DOESN'T MAKE SENSE. He was irrational.

Don't look for intent or bad motive: this was sheer irrationality in a reasonably smart mind.

Re:Rest in Peace

[quax]

That's the thing, he was smart, he was driven but unfortunately crazy. Loveable, ultimately tragic, and very human futility,

Ironically, at 39, he lived just over a half-life

[Anonymous Coward]

-nt

he looks like a meth abuser

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, paranoia, open sores, looks like he was abusing meth

Re:he looks like a meth abuser

[Anonymous Coward]

> looks like he was abusing meth

No, his teeth are too good.

So what ?

[Anonymous Coward]

So a nobody with mental problems and little knowledge of physics and a total disregard for others safety dies and its considered to be a news story ?
He was scary stupid then,to have tried to continued in the same vein shows what a head case he was.
In lots of other countries he would have been behing bars years ago,for either of two reasons,he had serious mental problems or because of his repeated criminal behaviour,but in the land of the free to be exploited,he is considered some kind of hero !!
It says a great deal about America..

I met him

[Anonymous Coward]

He was on my ship. I was a nuke. He was not, and he was not nearly smart enough to be one. Nor did he have the dedication or discipline to succeed at it. He was obnoxious and racist. And I don't mean pretend racist that everyone like to toss around. He was openly racist and got his ass kicked more than once because of how openly bigoted and belligerent about it he was. There was nothing impressive about him, except for his disregard for common sense.

Re:I met him

[hey!]

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.

Re:I met him

[Slugster]

I wondered what happened to this guy since the 2007 arrest (for smoke alarms)...
He never struck me as especially talented; he seemed to disregard a lot of safety matters with what he was doing, which is not the mark of an intellectual.
The facial sores looked like narcotics use or possibly still more radiation exposure, neither of which would have been good news (for him).

He was on my ship. I was a nuke. He was not, and he was not nearly smart enough to be one. Nor did he have the dedication or discipline to succeed at it. He was obnoxious and racist. And I don't mean pretend racist that everyone like to toss around. He was openly racist and got his ass kicked more than once because of how openly bigoted and belligerent about it he was. There was nothing impressive about him, except for his disregard for common sense.

If the claim of his schizophrenia is true I would hope this would dispel any anger you had for him.
The typical onset of this condition is the late-teens / early 20's, and schizophrenics commonly pose the greatest risk to themselves--exactly by attempting to do things that they don't really know much about.

Re:I met him

[Anonymous Coward]

Did he really do that though? According to other posters who read the books and other stories about him, nobody could prove any of what he said. The device was thrown out before anyone came to investigate. Did Silverstein do some research and say that's what was done, or did Hahn tell people that's what he did?
 
Genuinely asking because I honestly don't know. I am not trying to just be a troll.

Radioactive Meth, a bad idea?

[Cito]

What if?

He tried to make SuperMeth using childhood inspiration and Walter White mixed to create a new powerful " Radium infused crystal Methamphetamine ".

But idiot tried his own batch?
http://www.nndb.com/people/821...

lol

Short film

[braindrainbahrain]

A short documentary about David Hahn and his reactor was made some time ago. It has since found its way to youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Ironically, at 39, he lived just over a half-li

[Anonymous Coward]

yeaaaahhhh!

Sad

[Snotnose]

He was obviously smarter than most of us, and more driven. Too bad his energies couldn't be harnessed to positive ends.

Re:Sad

[Anonymous Coward]

He was obviously smarter than most of us

That really depends how define "Smart". He's a candidate for a Darwin Award - while he definitely had "some smarts", the processes he was carrying out could all be read about in books, and the dangers of the substances he was working with were known.

I would suggest he was a total idiot that cut his life in half to indulge in a wacky hobby.

If someone who likes to go yachting across the Pacific with no navigation equipment, no liferaft, no beacon etc. dies of exposure when something goes wrong on his yacht, we don't call him "smart"... same thing IMO.

Re:Sad

[thegarbz]

He was obviously smarter than most of us

How so? Because he attempted something out of a chemistry book but skipped all the bits about it being deadly as hell and it looks like it ultimately ended his life very early?

Re:Sad

[LostInTaiwan]

Some of this experiments were non-trivial, and he definitely was smart enough to go beyond what the nuclear regulatory agency thought was possible for an average citizen.

We can criticize the potential of harm to others by his experiments, but who are we do judge the wisdom of his actions for him.

Yeah, too bad his energies was misdirected and unguided.

Proof of the horrors of mental illness.

[Chas]

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.

Re:Proof of the horrors of mental illness.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, if anything, this is a cautionary tale about America's healthcare system.

Radioactive Chad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Combining that facial structure with severe psychosis... dude was probably quite popular with the ladies.

The sores just attest to how dangerously badass whatever the fuck he was doing was, and women love badasses.

if he was...

[Anonymous Coward]

not white boy. remember the clock boy?

Also, find out what others have already discovered

[Sycraft-fu]

This goes for anything you do, but particularly anything dangerous. Turns out humans have done a lot of research on shit, and we know the right answer for a lot of things already. So rather than just flailing about trying to figure out what is going on, do some research. It may turn out that the problem you are trying to solve has already been solved, or that people have figured out a good reason it can't. You can save yourself a lot of time and headache, and in the case of something like nuclear materials painful death, by spending time on the front end finding out what humans have already worked out on a topic, rather than just jumping in and seeing what the fuck happens.

Pussy

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucking pussy! This right here is why y'all got your ass beat this past election. You nerds got too big for your know-it-all britches and we had to take you back down a peg. Fuck your permits, fuck all your red tape. All your safety shit stands in the way of progress and while we have been trying to cooperate over the years, the rest of the world is passing us up, so your pussy bullshit is over with. This is how ya make 'Merica Great Again! 'MERICA FUCK YEAH!

Probably accidentally ingested

[m.dillon]

Of course we don't for sure, but if he was taking apart that stuff with his bare hands he was probably accidentally ingesting small amounts of contaminated material from whatever got onto his hands and dust getting onto food, the air he was breathing, etc. Remember, he was taking apart hundreds to possibly thousands of devices.

Ingestion is what killed the ladies painting aircraft instrument dials with radium-laced paint (the radium to make the dials glow in the dark). In that case it was more direct, the ladies often licked the small paintburshes they used to sharpen the point.

It is really unlikely that he would have been poisoned just by nominal free-air radiation from the stuff in his lab. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he had Geiger counters lying around and thought that taking readings would render sufficient safety.

-Matt

Let that be a lesson to us all

[Anonymous Coward]

Science can kill. Leave it to the professionals.

He was a glowing beacon for all of us.

[Qbertino]

*Tadum* *Crash* *Thud*

Thank you, thank you, I'm here all week.

This is how Meth can screw you up.

[Qbertino]

But if you look at this poor guy's later life, you'll see it for what it really is. Mental illness.

He apparently was a meth head.
Meth can turn the most sober and normal person into a unrecoverable basket case in record time.
Meth - Not even once.

Re:This is how Meth can screw you up.

[Chas]

He was a fuckup long before the meth.

What an irony...

[Anonymous Coward]

He shared the last name with Otto Hahn, who was actually a pioneer in nuclear physics (despite being a chemist). Of course names do not reflect talent.

Re:Also, find out what others have already discove

[tburkhol]

Turns out humans have done a lot of research on shit, and we know the right answer for a lot of things already.

As we used to say: a few months in the laboratory can save hours in the library.

Slashdot is a little slow

[chiefcrash]

Hahn died on September 27, 2016. Almost 2 months ago...

Good story about a good kid

[Anonymous Coward]

The Harpers piece is a well written article about a good kid who with the right coaching and facilitiescould have been a genius. The education system failed him by forcing him into mediocrity. RIP Sweet Prince.

Happier

[Anonymous Coward]

A happier story: similar kid - brilliant, enthusiastic, and a nut - but the adults spotted the same warning signs as Hahn and found open-minded experts who took him under their wing "Oh my lord, we can't let him do that. But maybe we can help him try to do it here" and now the country (and the kid!) are better off. http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-02/boy-who-played-fusion

he failed the motto

[siamesevodka]

He should have had a lead apron. The scout motto is be prepared......

Nightlight

[Anonymous Coward]

Did this Boy Scout glow in the dark?

Question

[Anonymous Coward]

If she tossed stuff in the trash before authorities searched the shed, was it legal to put that in that trash? Were the trash collectors at risk? What about where it is now....assuming a dump somewhere?

Misconceptions in the original post.

[MercTech]

Young Hahn did not attempt to make a nuclear reactor in his garden shed. Total misconception based on ignorance of high school level physics.

    What the radioactive boy scout did do was portray himself as a research institution in order to get samples of beryllium foil and Americium foil used in smoke detectors. Hahn also purchased a supply of natural uranium ore. He also had tungsten for use as a neutron reflector.

        As anyone who has googled "radiation sources for calibration" or "industrial neutron sources" you will see the reaction of an alpha particle striking a beryllium target and giving off a neutron. And, when an atom absorbs a neutron it can decay and become a totally different element. (i.e. U238 absorbs a neutron and decays off to Pu239. O16 absorbs a neutron and becomes N17 which decays emitting a hefty gamma.) As a sealed source where the neutron stream can readily be turned on and off; it is wonderful source of neutrons for calibration checks on neutron detectors and for doing Nitrogen 17 activation in well logging equipment and soil moisture detectors. (Soil moisture gages are found wherever road construction is being done. Well logging is done in both water well and oil well drilling.)

    Where his science fair level experimentation screwed up is with dealing with unsealed sources outside of a containment mechanism. Furthermore, beryllium has a hefty hazard class as beryllium dust in the lungs and beryllium splinters in the skin cause some seriously bad health effects. The shed where he was working ended up contaminated with sufficient levels of americium, beryllium, uranium, and some plutonium he had created by bombarding the uranium with a neutron flux. None of this would have been a bad thing if done inside a HEPA filtered fume hood with appropriate protective clothing in a controlled area. But, Hahn managed to contaminate the whole shed and had nuclides leaching into the soil beneath. Except when he had his neutron source engaged; there was never enough radiation to cause any hazard to people. The level of contaminants left were enough that when ingested could cause the ALI (Allowable Level for Intake) to be exceeded.

        I always find it comical the way the media can't seem to get a story straight that a high school B student in physics would no better than repeat. The details on the Hahn "Radioactive Boy Scout" incident and following cleanup were used back when I took Navy radiological safety training. It is a good small scale table top exercise for a dirty bomb scenario as well. Not hazardous to the people around so much as a psychological blow with a large fiscal expense to clean up.

I'm surprised no one signed his funeral logbook

[Anonymous Coward]

I felt his logbook needed something, so I wrote one:

http://www.tributes.com/condolences/view_memories/103989982#123047408

We should add a few nice notes.