Science & invention
David Hahn
1976–2016 · amateur experimenter
The 'Radioactive Boy Scout' who, as a teenager in suburban Detroit, tried to build a breeder reactor in a backyard shed in Commerce Township, prompting an EPA cleanup in 1995.
- Born
Royal Oak, Michigan- Died
Shelby Charter Township, Michigan
aged 39- Birth name
- David Charles Hahn
- Also known as
- The Radioactive Boy Scout
- Detroit years
- 1976–2016
- Field
- Science & invention
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Hahn was born in Royal Oak in 1976 and grew up in the suburbs north of Detroit, the son of a mechanical engineer. A gift of The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments started him on home experiments, and after earning the Boy Scouts' Atomic Energy merit badge he set out to build a breeder reactor. He gathered radioactive material from household products, such as americium from smoke detectors, thorium from lantern mantles and radium from old clocks, and in a potting shed at his mother's house in Commerce Township he built a crude neutron source. In August 1994 police stopping his car found suspicious material; federal agencies were called in, and in 1995 the Environmental Protection Agency dismantled the shed as a Superfund cleanup. Hahn later served in the Navy and Marine Corps, struggled with mental illness, and died in Shelby Township in 2016 at 39.
Highlights
- Built a crude neutron source from household radioactive materials, 1994
- The EPA cleaned up his Commerce Township shed as a Superfund site, 1995
- Subject of Ken Silverstein's book The Radioactive Boy Scout (2004)
- Earned the rank of Eagle Scout after his lab was dismantled