In the summer of 1994, 17-year-old David Hahn was pulled over by police in Detroit for a routine traffic stop. What the officers discovered in the trunk of his car wasn’t ordinary teenage mischief—it was radioactive material. Hahn, a Boy Scout from Commerce Township, Michigan, USA, had been quietly building what he called a “nuclear reactor” in his mother’s backyard shed.
Hahn’s interest in chemistry and nuclear science started young. Born in 1976, he was encouraged by his step-grandfather and inspired by books like The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments. He spent hours on home chemistry projects, sometimes with dangerous results. To channel his energy and give him structure, Hahn joined the Boy Scouts, eventually working toward a merit badge in Atomic Energy and the rank of Eagle Scout. But Hahn’s curiosity went far beyond the usual scout projects.
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By the early 1990s, Hahn had begun collecting radioactive elements from everyday household items. He extracted americium-241 from smoke detectors, thorium from gas lantern mantles, radium from antique clocks, and tritium from gunsights. Using a bored-out block of lead and improvised lab equipment, he attempted to assemble a breeder reactor—intending to convert low-level isotopes into fissile material. His experiments likely emitted radiation hundreds of times above normal background levels.
Hahn tried to manage the risk, splitting his radioactive materials between his shed, home, and car. But the police discovery in August 1994 exposed the full scale of his work. Federal authorities, including the FBI and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, were involved.
In June 1995, the Environmental Protection Agency declared the backyard shed a Superfund site, removed the radioactive materials, and buried them safely as low-level waste.
The fallout didn’t end there. Hahn’s personal life and career were turbulent. He served in the U.S. Navy aboard the nuclear-powered USS Enterprise and later in the Marine Corps, but struggled with mental health and substance abuse. He faced FBI investigations and legal troubles in the 2000s, including charges for stealing smoke detectors to obtain americium. Tragically, Hahn died in 2016 at 39, due to accidental intoxication from a mix of alcohol, fentanyl, and diphenhydramine.
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Hahn’s story resurfaced widely after journalist Ken Silverstein’s 1998 Harper’s Magazine article and his 2004 book The Radioactive Boy Scout. It remains a cautionary tale about the extremes of curiosity and the potential dangers of unchecked experimentation. Yet, it also inspired future young scientists, including Taylor Wilson, who became the youngest person to achieve nuclear fusion at 14.
David Hahn’s life was a mix of brilliance, audacity, and recklessness—an extraordinary example of what curiosity and determination can produce, for better or worse. His backyard reactor may have been dismantled, but the story continues to fascinate scientists, educators, and enthusiasts alike.
Story Sources: Wikipedia, Interesting Engineering, The Guardian
