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The radioactive boy scout the true story of a boy and his backyard nuclear reactor

When gifted David Hahn was working on his Atomic Energy badge for his local Boy Scout membership in the early 1990s, he turned his obsessive energy toward making a model nuclear reactor in his backyard garden shed. The story of his phenomenal work, including the deceptions he used to secure parts and the disastrous results, are related by Silverstein. In 1995, Hawn's personal reactor sparked a nuclear crisis for his small Detroit subarb.

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  • "While David Hahn was working on his Atomic Energy badge for the Boy Scouts, David's obsessive attention turned to nuclear energy. Posing as a physics professor, he solicited information on reactor design for the U.S. government and from industry experts, and 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 residents at risk, and the EPA ended up burying David's lab at a radioactive dumpsite in Utah."
  • "David Hahn, a boy scout, wanted to earn his science merit badge. He could have done an experiment with bicarbonate of soda, like most other kids. But he didn't. He built a nuclear reactor in his shed instead. David Hahn's gospel was The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments. While his friends were learning to play baseball or dreaming of owning their first car, David was in the middle of an increasingly hazardous trail of chemical experiments. Moving on from routine explosions that forced his work from his bedroom to the garden shed, David quickly determined to build a nuclear reactor. For this he had to make a neutron gun, dupe officials at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to provide him with information and imitate a professor of nuclear physics in order to obtain purified radioactive elements, all of which he did. David, sporting a gas mask for protection, took to the potting shed with his ever more unstable and dangerous load. His diligence and ultimate success triggered the Federal Radiological Emergency Response Plan: a team of men in moon suits who deconstructed the shed and loaded it and all its contents into steel drums emblazoned with radioactive warning signs. This is a true story. Through it, man's innocent obsession and fatal engagement with nuclear reactivity is told with surreal wonder."
  • "When gifted David Hahn was working on his Atomic Energy badge for his local Boy Scout membership in the early 1990s, he turned his obsessive energy toward making a model nuclear reactor in his backyard garden shed. The story of his phenomenal work, including the deceptions he used to secure parts and the disastrous results, are related by Silverstein. In 1995, Hawn's personal reactor sparked a nuclear crisis for his small Detroit subarb."@en
  • "Growing up in suburban Detroit, David Hahn was fascinated by science, and his basement experiments were far more ambitious than those of other boys. While working on his Atomic Energy merit 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 breeder reactor in his backyard garden shed. Ken Silverstein re-creates in brilliant detail the months of David's improbable nuclear quest. 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."@en

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  • "Case studies"@en
  • "Biography"@en
  • "Biography"
  • "Electronic books"@en

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  • "The radioactive boy scout the true story of a boy and his backyard nuclear reactor"@en
  • "The radioactive boy scout : the frightening true story of a whiz kid and his homemade nuclear reactor"@en
  • "The radioactive boy scout : the frightening true story of a whiz kid and his backyard nuclear reactor"
  • "The radioactive boyscout"@en
  • "The radioactive boyscout"
  • "The radioactive boy scout : the true story of a boy and his backyard nuclear reactor"@en
  • "The radioactive boy scout : the true story of a boy and his backyard nuclear reactor"
  • "The Radioactive Boy Scout The Frightening True Story of a Whiz Kid and His Homemade Nuclear Reactor"@en
  • "The Radioactive Boy Scout The Frightening True Story of a Whiz Kid and His Homemade Nuclear Reactor"
  • "The Radioactive Boy Scout : The true story of a boy and his backyard nuclear reactor"
  • "The radioactive boy scout : the true story of a boy and his homemade nuclear reactor"@en
  • "The radioactive boyscout : the true story of a boy and his backyard nuclear reactor"@en

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