David Hahn is an American man who attempted to build a homemade nuclear reactor when he was 17-years-old. As a youth, Hahn became a member of the Boy Scouts of America
David Hahn is an American man who attempted to build a homemade nuclear reactor when he was 17-years-old. As a youth, Hahn became a member of the Boy Scouts of America. In 1994, he was working towards gaining a merit badge in Atomic Energy, and started tinkering with some deadly elements. His experiment began when Hahn decided to gain samples of every element in the periodic table, including the radioactive ones. Over the span of a couple years, David Hahn gathered many deadly chemicals by extracting them from household products. He removed americium from smoke detectors, thorium from camping lantern mantles, radium from clocks and tritium from gun sights. Hahn’s used a large, bored-out block of lead for his reactor. He used lithium from $1,000 worth of purchased batteries to purify the thorium ash using a Bunsen burner. David Hahn hoped to create a breeder nuclear reactor. He conducted his experiment in secret, in a backyard shed at his mother’s house in Commerce Township, Michigan. A...