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

Science News, March 20, 2004

Silverstein elaborates on a true story he published in Harper's Magazine about a high school student taking the pursuit of his atomic energy Boy Scout badge to the next level. He built a nuclear-breeder reactor in his backyard. Silverstein reports that the youth, David Hahn, easily garnered the information he needed from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and old physics textbooks.

Outdated smoke detectors and gas lanterns provided enough radioactive material to fuel a device that threw off toxic levels of radiation--so toxic, in fact, that it put a town of 40,000 people at risk. After Hahn's lab was discovered in the summer of 1995, the Environmental Protection Agency had to bury it at a radioactive dumpsite in Utah. Silverstein explores how Hahn's passion for chemistry led to this seemingly unthinkable outcome and how the youngster pulled it off without his parents, his scoutmaster, or the government knowing about it. RH, 2004, 209 p., hardcover, $22.95.