Nuclear reactors are not pieces of equipment you come across everyday.
They are designed to produce thermal energy that can be used for its own sake or converted
into mechanical energy, and most of the time into electrical energy.
They work by maintaining a chain reaction producing a steady flow of neutrons, generated
by the fission of heavy nuclei, the most common of which is uranium-235 that produces the
thermal heat.
There are many different types of nuclear power reactors, but you certainly can’t
shop for one online.
However, there was one kid who was determined to get his hands on a reactor for himself.
Welcome to this episode of The Infographics Show: The Boy Scout Who Tried To Build a Nuclear
Reactor.
Imagine opening your bedroom curtains one day and looking out of your window to see
a strange green glow resonating from your neighbor's shed, and then noticing government
trucks being loaded with barrels marked radioactive by men dressed in hazmat suits outside your
home.
You might think you had been transported onto the set of the latest Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster.
But in 1995, for the residents of Golf Manor, Michigan, this was no made for tv drama.
A young teenage boy had built a nuclear breeder reactor in his mother's potting shed, a crazy
idea he thought up while working on his Atomic Energy merit badge in an attempt to earn Eagle
Scout status.
The boy’s name was David Charles Hahn who, not surprisingly, is sometimes called the
Radioactive Boy Scout or the Nuclear Boy Scout.
So how did teenager David Hahn go from being an everyday goofy schoolboy to nuclear reactor
developer?
Ken Silverstein is an American journalist who used to be the Washington editor and blogger
at Harper's Magazine.
He met David in the late 90’s to try and figure out exactly what happened, by hearing
the story from the proverbial horse’s mouth.
He described David as oddly dispassionate, though polite, until they began to discuss
his nuclear adventures.
Then, for five hours, David became enthused as he talked about working in his backyard
laboratory.
He explained to Silverstein that he used coffee filters and pickle jars to handle deadly substances
such as radium and nitric acid whilst working on developing his reactor.
David was a shy teenager, and so had only confided in a few friends about his crazy
and ambitious project, but never allowed anyone to witness his experiments.
He said to Silverstein “I was very emotional as a kid and those experiments gave me a way
to get away from that.
They gave me some respect.”
As David became more and more preoccupied with science, he had less and less time for
friends, though during his high school years, he did have a girlfriend, Heather Beaudette.
Heather was three years younger than David, and she says he was sweet and caring, but
not always the perfect date.
Heather’s mom described David this way: “He was a nice kid and always presentable,
but we had to tell him not to talk to anybody.
He could eat and drink but, for God’s sake, don’t talk to the guests about the food’s
chemical composition.”
But how did David advance from being this somewhat geeky experimenting student, to a
boy with a reactor?
David was a boy scout, and Eagle Scouts must earn 21 merit badges.
11 are mandatory, such as First Aid and Citizenship in the Community.
The final 10 are optional, and scouts can choose from dozens of choices ranging from
American Business to Woodwork.
Of course, David chose to specialize and earn a merit badge in Atomic Energy.
He was awarded his Atomic Energy merit badge on May 10, 1991, five months shy of his fifteenth
birthday.
To earn the badge, David visited a hospital radiology unit to learn about the medical
uses of radioisotopes, he made a drawing showing how nuclear fission occurs, but most importantly,
David built a model reactor using simple household apparati including a juice can, coat hangers,
soda straws, matches, and rubber bands.
The scouts were impressed, but David had far greater ambitions.
He got to work with writing as many as 20 letters a day, pretending to be a physics
instructor at Chippewa Valley High School.
This budding young entrepreneur approached groups listed in his merit-badge pamphlet,
such as the DOE, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the American Nuclear Society, the Edison
Electric Institute, and the Atomic Industrial Forum, the nuclear-power industry’s trade
group.
He obtained all sorts of information.
The NRC was by far the most helpful and David managed to engage the agency’s director
of isotope production and distribution, Donald Erb.
Erb provided tips on isolating certain radioactive elements.
He gave a list of isotopes that can sustain a chain reaction, and imparted a piece of
information that would soon prove to be vital to David’s plans: “Nothing produces neutrons,
as well as beryllium.”
The NRC had now given David all the information he required to build a reactor, and he just
needed to source the raw materials.
He typed up a shopping list of items that contained very small amounts of the 14 radioactive
isotopes required for the first step.
Americium-241, he discovered, could be found in smoke detectors; radium-226, in antique
luminous dial clocks; uranium-238 and minute quantities of uranium-235, in a black ore
called pitchblende; and thorium-232, in Coleman-style gas lanterns.
David created a neutron gun and was ready to irradiate.
He thought that uranium-235, which is used in atomic weapons, would provide the “biggest
reaction.”
But getting your hands on uranium is no simple task.
He hunted hundreds of miles of upper Michigan looking for “hot rocks” with his Geiger
counter, but all he could find was a quarter trunkload of pitchblende, a radioactive, uranium-rich
mineral, on the shores of Lake Huron.
He also posed as a professor again, buying materials for a nuclear-research laboratory.
He obtained a few samples but not enough.
He eventually decided to switch from uranium and instead hunt down some thorium-232 which,
when bombarded with neutrons, produces uranium-233.
David knew, from his merit-badge boy scout pamphlet, that the mantle used in commercial
gas lanterns is coated with a compound containing thorium-232.
He bought thousands of lantern mantles from surplus stores and, using a blowtorch, reduced
them into a pile of ash, so he could extract the thorium-232.
Next David needed Radium.
He knew Radium was used in the paint on the faces of clocks, automobiles, and airplane
instrument panels until the late 1960’s.
So he began visiting junkyards and antique stores in search of radium-coated dashboard
panels or clocks.
Once he had enough, David secured a sample of barium sulfate from the X-ray ward at a
local hospital, and used it to concentrate the radium.
Now 17, he’d made significant progress, and David planned to build a model breeder
reactor.
But he needed at least 30 pounds of enriched uranium to sustain a chain reaction.
He was determined to get as far as he could by trying to get his various radioisotopes
to interact with one another.
David said, “No matter what happened there would be something changing into something.
Some kind of action going on there.”
He monitored his mini reactor at the Golf Manor laboratory with his Geiger counter.
“The level of radiation after a few weeks was far greater than it was at the time of
assembly.
I know I transformed some radioactive materials.
Even though there was no critical pile, I know that some of the reactions that go on
in a breeder reactor went on to a minute extent.”
He said.
It was 2:40 am on August 31, 1994, when the Clinton Township police responded to a call
concerning a young man who had been spotted in a residential neighborhood, apparently
stealing tires from a car.
When they caught up with David, they discovered over fifty foil-wrapped cubes of mysterious
gray powder in the truck of his car, small disks and cylindrical metal objects, lantern
mantles, mercury switches, a clock face, ores, fireworks, vacuum tubes, and assorted chemicals
and acids.
The police must have been baffled!
They called in the Michigan State Police Bomb Squad to examine David’s car and the State
Department of Public Health or DPH, to supply radiological assistance.
State radiological experts found aluminum pie pans, jars of acids, Pyrex cups, milk
crates, and other materials strewn about in David’s makeshift shed laboratory, much
of it contaminated with excessive levels of radioactive material, especially americium-241
and thorium-232.
How high, you’re wondering?
A vegetable can, for example, registered at 50,000 counts per minute, which is about 1,000
times higher than normal levels of background radiation.
After determining that no radioactive materials had leaked outside the shed, state authorities
sealed it and petitioned the federal government for help.
Unfortunately David went into a serious depression after his laboratory was shut down.
Years of painstaking work had been thrown in the garbage or buried deep underground.
Students at Chippewa Valley had taken to calling him “Radioactive Boy,” and when his girlfriend,
Heather, sent David Valentine’s balloons at his high school, they were seized by the
principal, who apparently feared they had been inflated with chemical gases David needed
to continue his experiments.
David had hoped to pursue a career as a nuclear specialist but he ended up enlisting in the
Navy.
EPA scientists believe his life expectancy may have been greatly shortened by his exposure
to radioactivity, particularly since he spent large amounts of time in the small, enclosed
shed with large amounts of radioactive material.
David died on Tuesday, September 27, 2016, at the age of 39.
His father confirmed that the cause of death was not from radiation exposure, but alcohol
poisoning.
So, do you know other crazy stories of young scientists creating their own labs and experiments?
Let us know in the comments!
Also, be sure to check out our other video called Atomic Bomb vs Hydrogen Bomb!
Thanks for watching, and, as always, don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe.
See you next time!