Growing up in suburban Detroit, David Hahn was fascinated by science. While he was working on his Atomic Energy badge for the Boy Scouts, David’s obsessive attention turned to nuclear energy. Throwing caution to the wind, he plunged into a new project: building a model nuclear reactor in his backyard garden shed.
Posing as a physics professor, David solicited information on reactor design from the U.S. government and from industry experts. Following blueprints he found in an outdated physics textbook, David cobbled together a crude device that threw off toxic levels of radiation. His wholly unsupervised project finally sparked an environmental emergency that put his town’s forty thousand suburbanites at risk. The EPA ended up burying his lab at a radioactive dumpsite in Utah. This offbeat account of ambition and, ultimately, hubris has the narrative energy of a first-rate thriller.
The Radioactive Boy Scout: The Frightening True Story of a Whiz Kid and His Homemade Nuclear Reactor FROM THE PUBLISHER Growing up in suburban Detroit, David Hahn was fascinated by science, and his basement experiments--building homemade fireworks, brewing moonshine, and concocting his own self-tanning lotion--were more ambitious than those of other boys. While working on his Atomic Energy badge for the Boy Scouts, David's obsessive attention turned to nuclear energy. Throwing caution to the wind, he plunged into a new project: building a nuclear breeder reactor in his backyard garden shed. In The Radioactive Boy Scout, veteran journalist Ken Silverstein recreates in brilliant detail the months of David's improbable nuclear quest. Posing as a physics professor, David solicited information on reactor design from the U.S. government and from industry experts. (Ironically, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was his number one source of information.) Scavenging antiques stores and junkyards for old-fashioned smoke detectors and gas lanterns--both of which contain small amounts of radioactive material--and following blueprints he found in an outdated physics textbook, David cobbled together a crude device that threw off toxic levels of radiation. His unsanctioned and wholly unsupervised project finally sparked an environmental catastrophe that put his town's forty thousand residents at risk and caused the EPA to shut down his lab and bury it at a radioactive dumpsite in Utah. An outrageous account of ambition and, ultimately, hubris that sits comfortably on the shelf next to such offbeat science books as Driving Mr. Albert and stories of grand capers like Catch Me If You Can, The Radioactive Boy Scout is a real-life adventure with the narrative energy of a first-rate thriller.
FROM THE CRITICS KLIATT - Paula Rohrlick
David Hahn, enthusiastically working on his Boy Scout merit badge in atomic energy, got a little carried awaya An obsessive type who had always been fascinated by science, he had conducted various experiments ranging from making his own fireworks to concocting a tanning lotion throughout his childhood, but when David became a teenager he sought out new challenges. As the subtitle makes clear (and the Day-Glo colors of the cover nicely reinforce), the suburban Detroit 16-year-old set out to build a model nuclear reactor in the backyard potting shed—and he got pretty far, too. In 1994, government officials discovered his creation, which was emitting toxic levels of radiation and posing a health risk to thousands of local residents, and classified the shed as a federal Superfund site. Silverstein, a journalist who originally published a story about David in Harper's Magazine, describes David's oblivious family, his scientific single-mindedness (he pretended to be a physics professor to obtain information on reactor design), and touches on the history of atomic energy, too. The result is a gripping read of interest to everyone, not just budding scientists. KLIATT Codes: JSA—Recommended for junior and senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2004, Random House, Villard, 210p. notes., Ages 12 to adult.
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