The Radioactive Boy Scout: The Frightening True Story of a Whiz Kid and His Homemade Nuclear Reactor (Paperback)

~ (Author) "David Hahn's earliest memory seems appropriate in light of later events; it is of conducting an experiment in the bathroom when he was perhaps four..." (more)
Key Phrases: Golden Book, Clinton Township, Chippewa Valley (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Anyone who has ever wondered what the neighborhood geek might be brewing up in his backyard should read The Radioactive Boy Scout. This is a riveting and disturbing story about the power of the teenage mind—and the sparks that fly when a nuclear family melts down.”
—David Kushner, author of Masters of Doom

“Amazing . . . unsettling . . . should come with a warning: Don’t buy [this book] for any obsessive kids in the family. It might give them ideas.”
–Rocky Mountain News

“An astounding story . . . [Silverstein] has a novelist’s eye for meaningful detail and a historian’s touch for context.”
–The San Diego Union-Tribune

“Alarming . . . The story fascinates from start to finish.”
–Outside

“Enthralling . . . [It] has the quirky pleasures of a Don DeLillo novel or an Errol Morris documentary. . . . An engaging portrait of a person whose life on America’s fringe also says something about mainstream America.”
–Minneapolis Star Tribune


“[Silverstein] does a fabulous job of letting David [Hahn’s] surrealistic story tell itself. . . . But what’s truly amazing is how far Hahn actually got in the construction of his crude nuclear reactor.”
–The Columbus Dispatch

Product Description

Growing up in suburban Detroit, David Hahn was fascinated by science. While he was 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 model nuclear reactor in his backyard garden shed.

Posing as a physics professor, David solicited information on reactor design from the U.S. government and from industry experts. Following blueprints he found in an outdated physics textbook, David cobbled together a crude device that threw off toxic levels of radiation. His wholly unsupervised project finally sparked an environmental emergency that put his town’s forty thousand suburbanites at risk. The EPA ended up burying his lab at a radioactive dumpsite in Utah. This offbeat account of ambition and, ultimately, hubris has the narrative energy of a first-rate thriller.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 209 pages
• Publisher: Villard; First Edition edition (January 11, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812966600
• ISBN-13: 978-0812966602
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #182,763 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, April 5, 2007

By	Bernard K. Skoch (Northwest Arkansas) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have no quarrel with anti-nuclear books or thoughts, but this book presents itself as "The frightening true story of a whiz kid and his homemade nuclear reactor." It's not.

The author spends far too much time criticizing nuclear power and oddly enough, the Boy Scouts, and far too little on the actual incident that led to the story.

Silverstein's anti-nuclear slant is obvious. Chapter 2 (sarcastically titled "From the Radium Craze to the Soaring Sixties: Science Conquers All") is a criticism of all things nuclear, including Hiroshima, the Atomic Energy Commission, using nuclear energy to generate electricity, and the Cold War.

Writing about the Boy Scouts' "Atomic Energy" merit badge booklet, he says "Such was the pronuke slant of the pamphlet that it...was authored by a group of nuclear-power advocates." (Who else would the Boy Scouts ask to write it?) He continued "The Boy Scouts systematically whitewashed the many problems encountered by nuclear power."

Silverstein devotes nearly a full chapter to criticizing the Boy Scouts as an insitution. He writes "The Boy Scouts have always claimed to be apolitical, but the group has had a decidedly right wing character." He devotes a page to reciting a cynical poem that mocks the Boy Scout motto "Be Prepared" with lines like "Be prepared to hold your liquor pretty well" and "Keep those reefers hidden...when the Scoutmaster's around, for he will only insist that they be shared. Be prepared!" What's the point of that?

Siverstein also states "So shameless and enduring was [the Boy Scouts'] shilling for nuclear power the the scouts later helped the industry turn the partial core meltdown and mass evacuation of Three Mile Island into a marketing opportunity." (He later acknowedges that Three Mile Island produced zero fatalities and resulted in the precautionary evacuation of only pregnant women and small children.)

The book is not about a "radioactive Boy Scout." It is a critique of nuclear power and the Boy Scouts. He of course has every right to express those thoughts, but I felt deceived and cheated out of my $13.95.

(I Google'd the book's author, "Ken Silverstein." You might want to as well.)

25 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars From his former Scoutmaster, August 4, 2007

By	Mr. Scoutmaster (Florida) - See all my reviews

I was David's scoutmaster when he was preparing for his Eagle Scout Board of Review. I was to contact five registered adult Scout leaders, who would comprise the Board. One prospective adult told me he could not sit on the Board, because "something happened".

I learned that David and some friends were stopped by the cavaliering Clinton Township (Michigan) Police, who were randomly stopping teens and searching their cars for stolen tires.

David was not allowed to keep his experiments in his stepmother's home, so he kept everything in his car trunk. The cops found no tires, but saw his stuff and overreacted.

Days later, David's father phoned and said that David would no longer pursue the Eagle Scout rank.

A month or so later, a man claiming to be a reporter phoned my home, wanting to do a telephone interview about David. After a few moments, I refused. There was something negative about the line of questioning.

As a Scout, David was always clean-cut, polite, and well-liked by the other boys. My take is that David had the scientific curiosity of a Tesla or Edison; not of an evil prankster.

David's father, like so many divorced and re-married men, walked a tightrope between caring for his son and appeasing a new bride.

As for Mr. Silverstein, he should keep his story factual, and keep his opinions about Scouting to the editorial pages.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good story but contains technical errors, March 9, 2007

By	Salvatore F. Russo (Bellingham, WA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I found it fascinating to read about the exploits of David Hahn and his ability to acquire and experiment with radioactive materials. Ken Silverstein has done a good job of including pertinent scientific background with the personal story of David.

My main criticism is that there are several errors in the technical chemistry provided in the book: For example, vinegar is 5% acetic acid (not 30%). Canthaxanthin is not a steroid. Electromotive force creates centrifugal force which then allows for the separation of U-235 and U-238. The combined number of protons and neutrons in a nucleus is called the mass number. When David used a charcoal grill inside the shed, the chief hazard was carbon monoxide (not carbon dioxide). Tyrosine is an amino acid (not an enzyme). Carboxylic acid refers to a class of compounds. Cesium-137 undergoes beta decay (not gamma ray emission). Also, the author confuses volatility with reactivity. It is unfortunate that the text was not reviewed by a chemist who could have pointed out these errors prior to publication.