This is a very interesting story, but this article is pretty light on a lot of the details of his life. He got into a lot of mischief throughout his life and unfortunately died a few years ago: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn</a>. It's a real shame, because he was obviously bright and highly motivated and I feel like he was just never able to really put all that potential into action.<p>My favorite part of the story is that he was arrested for stealing smoke detectors from his apartment building trying to collect radioactive material. One of my first jobs was shipping / receiving for an electronics manufacturer, and smoke / gas detectors were the lion's share of our business. I was told I always had to classify the products as "components for a nuclear reactor" on international shipping manifests, which I thought was silly. Until I read this story...
FYI:<p>David Charles Hahn (October 30, 1976 - September 27, 2016),<p>sometimes called the "Radioactive Boy Scout" or the "Nuclear Boy Scout" : <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn</a><p>The Nuclear Boy Scout - A Short Documentary : <a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WyFktKBGfIA" rel="nofollow">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WyFktKBGfIA</a><p>The Nuclear Boy Scout (TV Short 2003) - IMDb : <a href="https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0378468/" rel="nofollow">https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0378468/</a>
> The Scoutmaster’s wife noted that a typical kid working on this badge goes to a hospital and asks about x-rays. David decided to build a Breeder Reactor. This was perfectly logical to someone with a rather naive social awareness, accompanied by a passion for collecting all the Periodic Table Elements.<p>Can someone explain the logical connection between "naive social awareness" and "choosing to go way above and beyond for this merit badge"?<p>As someone with Asperger syndrome (very mild) and the parent of a kid with it (more so), I may be overly sensitive to stereotyping on the topic. So in that excerpt above, what I hear is a neuro-typical adult dismissing the kid's amazing accomplishment here, just because he's socially awkward.<p>I'm sure she's actually a lovely person, so I'm hoping someone can give me a better explanation.
This happened again in Sweden [1] with another guy who didn't seem to think he was doing anything wrong until he called the radiation authorities there and ended up getting raided. His old blog is pretty funny [2]<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Handl" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Handl</a>
[2] <a href="https://richardsreactor.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow">https://richardsreactor.blogspot.com/</a>
This story always reminds me of the Nth Country Experiment, from 1964, where the United States wondered how long it would take a country to design a nuclear weapon, starting from no particular expertise or classified access. One answer, they learned, was three new physics PhDs and two and half years. I don't know if that's when the US started focusing on enriched uranium, but that is really the only limiting factor in the whole deal.
"The Scoutmaster’s wife noted that a typical kid working on this badge goes to a hospital and asks about x-rays. David decided to build a Breeder Reactor."<p>.!!.<p>I'm currently reading through the 1950s "Tom Swift Jr." stories... so maybe that's why I expected this HN post to be a great work of fiction. Like Charles Stross' "De-chlorinating the Moderator" <a href="http://www.antipope.org/charlie/fiction/moderator.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.antipope.org/charlie/fiction/moderator.html</a><p>The real world can be more delightful. And terrifying.
I couldn't help but notice that he looks a bit... unhealthy on the 2007 mugshot (<a href="https://talesfromthenuclearage.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/david_hahn-mugshot.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://talesfromthenuclearage.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/d...</a>) - is that just a bad case of acne (unusual at 31), or is that somehow connected to exposure to radiation?<p>Ah, ok, Wikipedia to the rescue:<p>> <i>In his mug shot, his face was covered with sores, which investigators believed could have been from exposure to radioactive materials, psoriasis, or possible drug use.</i>
Was just telling some friends about this story the other day. He want to the the same high school as I did, although he was a few years after me; I think he may have had a class with one of my siblings.
The classic article is <a href="https://harpers.org/archive/1998/11/the-radioactive-boy-scout/" rel="nofollow">https://harpers.org/archive/1998/11/the-radioactive-boy-scou...</a>, from 1998. Did this one just lift the title for a different piece on the same topic?<p>Related:<p><i>The Radioactive Boy Scout (1998)</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23538908" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23538908</a> - June 2020 (1 comment)<p><i>The Radioactive Boy Scout</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18396332" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18396332</a> - Nov 2018 (1 comment)<p><i>The Radioactive Boy Scout (1999)</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15466860" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15466860</a> - Oct 2017 (34 comments)<p><i>“Radioactive Boy Scout” who tried to build a homemade nuclear reactor dead at 39</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12957768" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12957768</a> - Nov 2016 (67 comments)<p><i>The Radioactive Boy Scout: When a teenager attempts to build a breeder reactor</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9867739" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9867739</a> - July 2015 (5 comments)<p><i>The Radioactive Boy Scout (1998)</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6310748" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6310748</a> - Sept 2013 (1 comment)<p><i>The radioactive boy scout: the teenager who attempted to build a breeder reactor</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=611583" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=611583</a> - May 2009 (18 comments)<p>Also related, a little less directly:<p><i>Middle school student achieved nuclear fusion in his family playroom</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24705563" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24705563</a> - Oct 2020 (82 comments)<p><i>Boy, 12, said to have created nuclear reaction in playroom lab</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19472076" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19472076</a> - March 2019 (14 comments)<p><i>12-Year-Old Claims to Have Achieved Nuclear Fusion at Home (2018)</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19229433" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19229433</a> - Feb 2019 (92 comments)<p><i>“I built a fusion reactor in my bedroom – AMA”</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12118525" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12118525</a> - July 2016 (127 comments)<p><i>The Fusioneers, who build nuclear reactors in their back yards</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11777553" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11777553</a> - May 2016 (54 comments)<p><i>Nobody builds nuclear reactors for fun anymore</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6867072" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6867072</a> - Dec 2013 (102 comments)<p><i>The Nuclear Scientist Who Skipped College</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4762449" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4762449</a> - Nov 2012 (50 comments)