Posted on 03/17/2004 4:47:34 AM PST by billorites
These days, the phrase "nuclear ambitions" is applied ominously to countries or heads of state. Yet it aptly describes an ordinary teenager in suburban Detroit named David Hahn. His experience is a frightening indication of how easily dangerous materials can be acquired - and hidden.
Despite growing up in an era of no-nukes activism, David wanted nothing more than to join the Curies in the annals of atomic history. That the radium they discovered eventually killed the Curies doesn't seem to have muted his enthusiasm.
David's aptitude for science was phenomenal. From a 1960s-era book of chemistry experiments, he quickly gleaned the principles and skills of manipulating reactions, and expanded his capabilities with long hours of research at the library.
His safety record was literally stunning. Taking only the barest precautions, he remained unfazed by accidents that turned his hair green, burned his skin, or knocked him out cold. Larger blunders alarmed his father and stepmother, but he learned to cover up his failures.
At school, he was a poor student and terrible speller (the wall of his potting-shed laboratory carried the admonition: "Caushon"). His occasional claims of chemical and, later, nuclear research were dismissed by parents and teachers as attempts to get attention.
And so it was that with ingenuity and supplemental information from letters to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 17-year-old David gathered and refined - mostly from household products - enough radioactive material to make a crude breeder reactor in his backyard.
It was small and would never create an appreciable amount of fissionable fuel, but by the time David disassembled the runaway experiment in 1994, his Geiger counter was detecting radiation from several houses away.
Journalist Ken Silverstein gathered material from extensive interviews with David and his family and from police and EPA reports about this backyard experiment. The story appeared as a Harper's Magazine article in 1998, and now Silverstein has expanded it into some 200 pages.
What emerges in that greater space is that David's pattern of grandiose plans followed by accidents and coverups mirrors the larger history of breeder reactors. In theory, breeders make more fuel than they use. In practice, as Silverstein notes, "the few attempts to build a breeder have resulted in some of the scariest episodes in the nuclear era."
Another problem that's agonizingly apparent is the emotional neglect of David by his family. His father spent time with him only on scouting trips. His adoring mother was too lost in alcohol and mental problems to be supportive. The personal tragedy here sounds as disturbing as the potential public disaster.
• Tim Rauschenberger is on the Monitor's Web staff.
The Radioactive Boy Scout The True Story of a Boy and His Backyard Nuclear Reactor
By Ken Silverstein
Random House209 pp., $22.95
Absolutely!
This is the kind of D.I.Y. spirit that makes this country great.
(the wall of his potting-shed laboratory carried the admonition: "Caushon")Or something.
Made a carbon-arc furnace, boiled glass, projected image of this on wall (no welding glasses);
Isolated two antibiotics from cultures made from spores found in backyard soil. Demonstrated zone of inhibition. Injected into mice (using real hypodermic syringes, ordered through the mail from Fisher Scientific). Mice survived.
Built my own gas supply for bunsen burners, using a mouthwash bottle filled with alcohol, an aquarium air pump and airstone, and some 3/8-inch Tygon tubing.
Made a pulsed rocket engine that (crudely) exploited shockwave interference to compress fuel. Measured its specific impulse.
Built four-bit binary adder out of relays made from wood, nails, paper clips, and copper wire.
Much photography, developed myself. Delighted self with harmonograms made by pointing camera upward at flashlight hung from ceiling on a string, flashlight had paper pinhole baffle over lens, lights off in basement, opened shutter and let it record flashlight movements for ten minutes or so. Beautiful images of mathematics in action.
Some mild explosives "play." No nukes, though.
When I read this kid's story in Harper's, my heart and admiration went out to him. He did much, much more than I, and showed incredible tenacity. It was impossible not to notice the magazine's wierd tone, which seemed to imply that the kid was deeply disturbed, living in a fantasy world that was indicative of some kind of psycho-pathology, or maybe a mild form of retardation. This while simultaneously describing his overall success at demonstrating neutron production and change in atomic weight of some of his reaction product. In other words, he was a delusional nut who somehow accidently did actual nuclear chemestry in his backyard.
I would love to find out what became of him. I hope his health wasn't injured, but, on the other hand, I understand the joy that would have driven him to ignore the risks to pursue his vision.
(steely)
This guy knows nothing about the nuclear power industry.
I thought Eagle required 24 merit badges?
Flaming Tonka's
The d-sized rocket engines epoxied to a tonka nicely propelled a tonka truck laden with gasoline down the street until they inevitably went off course on someone's lawn or against a telephone pole with the rocket engine spewing enough fire to create one heck of a hot spot.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal has a whining article in the Capitol Watch section today about how the Asians are whipping our behinds in math and science, and how we are going to soon be outsourcing "innovation." Look at how we treat our own local kids who could be innovators. Read Rocket Boys (upon which the movie October Sky was based) - those kids would have been locked up in juvenile hall today for what they did then. We claim we want "innovation" but we punish it when it actually rears its head.
This is Harper's, remember? The second I read "nuclear" and "Harper's" in the same sentence I knew what the slant would be in that left wing pinko rag.
The editors clearly intend to scare the hell out of their liberal readers by implying that end-of-the-world breeder reactors can be built by any kid next door. By association, if he happens to be an evil Boy Scout working on merit badges, he's probably out to do in the World as We Know It. This is such a predictable hit piece it's almost laughable.
Your early experiments amused me. I recalled my adventures with a well-stocked Gilbert's Chemistry Set many years ago when you could purchase sulphuric acid, etc., at the corner drug store and potassium nitrate in the spice section at the grocery store (they labeled it saltpeter). I made hydrogen, fused glass, cranked out lots of home-built gunpowder, grew crystals, distilled alcohol, made carbide cannons, etc. I did minor damage to some unimportant property but didn't hurt anyone. I grew up to be a productive law-abiding adult with all my original parts. I even owned a Red Ryder BB gun (several, in fact) and still have both eyes.
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