Failure™ Magazine

You Glow Boy!

The story of a teenager’s nuclear ambitions.

Written by Jason Zasky   Filed under Science & Technology

The typical adolescent male dreams of getting accepted to an Ivy League school, becoming a rock star, or escorting a supermodel to the senior prom. High school student David Hahn fantasized about something even more improbable. This mostly unremarkable young man from suburban Detroit could hardly be bothered with normal teenage diversions. Hahn was too busy collecting radioactive elements for his homemade nuclear reactor, which he was sure he could complete, if only he could conceal his activities from parents, friends and teachers, not to mention law enforcement and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Before police accidentally discovered his exploits in the summer of 1994 this obsessively driven teen advanced his hazardous experiments far enough to warrant federal intervention and a cleanup effort befitting a Superfund site. Hahn’s story—told in the new book “The Radioactive Boy Scout: The True Story of a Boy and his Backyard Nuclear Reactor,” by Ken Silverstein (Random House)—begins in Commerce Township, Michigan, and ends at a nuclear waste dump in the Utah desert.

Hahn’s uncommon devotion to science manifested itself at a young age. Although a below-average student, he had an insatiable curiosity for all things scientific. During his pre-teen years he spent an inordinate amount of time disassembling and rebuilding mechanical and electric products like radios and toasters. While his friends were outside at play, Hahn was inside conducting experiments with household cleaning products and brewing noxious concoctions using his ever-growing assemblage of beakers, Bunsen burners, test tubes and chemicals.

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