The Radioactive Boy Scout: The True Story of a Boy and His Backyard Nuclear Reactor

by Ken Silverstein
[cover name=theradioactiveboyscout]

How would you like to come home one day and find people from the Environmental Protection Agency in your neighbor’s yard wearing those hazmat suits that they only wear when dealing with some kind of horrible disease or nuclear accident? Well, this actually happened to the residents of Golf Manor, which is near Detroit, Michigan. The folks from the EPA were busy cutting up a shed and sealing away all the parts in big canisters with radioactive warning signs on them.

What happened? Well, the seventeen-year-old boy who lived next door, David Hahn, was building a nuclear reactor in his back yard. Why? Well, he had always loved chemistry, and he may have been worried about the world eventually running out of oil. He was also a boy scout, and he had enjoyed getting his Atomic Energy badge, and he wanted to become an Eagle Scout. Very few scouts become Eagle Scouts, since it involves a really big project. Ideally, the project does not involve breaking federal laws and endangering the lives of 40,000 people, but David figured that making a nuclear reactor would still be the biggest Eagle Scout project ever.

You aren’t supposed to be able to get the material to build a nuclear reactor in the Unite States if you aren’t officially approved by the federal government, but that didn’t stop David. He pretended to be a high school science teacher (and eventually a college professor) when he wrote to various scientists for advice. He got a list of ordinary household items that contain radioactive materials, bought them in bulk, and extracted the radioactive elements. He bought or stole smoke detectors to get americium-241. Apparently he got a hundred broken smoke detectors for $1 each by claiming they were for a school project. He took tiny amounts of tritium from the sights of glow-in-the-dark plastic guns, wrote to the manufacturers claiming the sights were damaged, had them replaced, and took that tritium, too. He scraped the paint off glow-in-the-dark alarm clock hands because it contained radium-226. These clocks don’t really contain a lot of radium, but David managed to find a lot of spare paint in a clock at an antique store.

He used blowtorches, aluminum foil, coffee filters, and other household items to refine the radioactive materials he needed. Amazingly enough, most of his crazy ideas worked. He eventually decided to build a breeder reactor, which is a nuclear reactor that generates power and makes more radioactive fuel for itself. He never got the energy part working, but he did get it to produce more fuel.

Eventually David decided that the dangerous levels of radiation might be a little too dangerous, so he dismantled his reactor and put parts of it in the trunk of his car. While he was doing this, the police showed up. They were looking for a kid who was stealing tires, but they decided to check David out. You can guess what happened when he told them not to open the toolbox because it was radioactive.

There’s much more to the story, but you’ve got to read it yourself. If they put this stuff in a movie (and they might), nobody would believe it.

While this book is about science, it is not a science textbook. There are some big words, but you don’t need to know very much to enjoy the story, and what you do need to know will be explained. Basically, as long as you know that building a nuclear reactor in your bad yard is not a safe idea, you already know most of the science you need. You might even learn a thing or two. Just don’t try this at home.

You can read the first chapter online at the publisher’s website.

This book came from an article that Ken Silverstein wrote for Harper’s Magazine. You an read that article at the Harper’s site.

[starratingmulti id=”1″]

Where to Find It

[librarylist]
[librarydate]