The Radioactive Boy Scout: The True Story of a Boy and His Backyard Nuclear Reactor Hardcover - 2004

Growing up in suburban Detroit, David Hahn was fascinated by science, and his basement experiments--building homemade fireworks, brewing moonshine, and concocting his own self-tanning lotion--were more ambitious than those of other boys. While working on his Atomic Energy badge for the Boy Scouts, David's obsessive attention turned to nuclear energy. Throwing caution to the wind, he plunged into a new project: building a nuclear breeder reactor in his backyard garden shed.In The Radioactive Boy Scout, veteran journalist Ken Silverstein recreates in brilliant detail the months of David's improbable nuclear quest. Posing as a physics professor, David solicited information on reactor design from the U.S. government and from industry experts. (Ironically, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was his number one source of information.) Scavenging antiques stores and junkyards for old-fashioned smoke detectors and gas lanterns--both of which contain small amounts of radioactive material--and following blueprints he found in an outdated physics textbook, David cobbled together a crude device that threw off toxic levels of radiation. His unsanctioned and wholly unsupervised project finally sparked an environmental catastrophe that put his town's forty thousand residents at risk and caused the EPA to shut down his lab and bury it at a radioactive dumpsite in Utah.An outrageous account of ambition and, ultimately, hubris that sits comfortably on the shelf next to such offbeat science books as Driving Mr. Albert and stories of grand capers like Catch Me If You Can, The Radioactive Boy Scout is a real-life adventure with the narrative energy of a first-rate thriller.From the Hardcover edition.

Details

• Title The Radioactive Boy Scout: The True Story of a Boy and His Backyard Nuclear Reactor
• Author Ken Silverstein
• Binding Hardcover
• Edition First Edition
• Pages 240
• Volumes 1
• Language ENG
• Publisher Random House (NY), New York
• Date March 2, 2004
• ISBN 9780375503511 / 037550351X
• Weight 0.73 lbs (0.33 kg)
• Dimensions 7.34 x 5.78 x 0.89 in (18.64 x 14.68 x 2.26 cm)
• Reading level 1300
• Library of Congress subjects Problem youth - United States, Breeder reactors
• Library of Congress Catalog Number 2003054811
• Dewey Decimal Code B