REP 0 R T

THE R-LL\DIO-LL\CTIVEBOY SCOUT

When a teenager attempts to build a breeder reactorBy Ken Silverstein

There is hardly a boyar a girl alivewho is not keenly interested infinding out about things. Andthat's exactly what chem-istry is: FINDING OUTABOUT THINGS-finding out what thingsare made of and whatchanges they undergo.What things? Any thing!Every thing!-The Golden Book of Chemistry

Experiments

Golf Manor is the kind ofplace where nothing un-usual is supposed to happen,

the kind of place where people liveprecisely because it is more than 25miles outside of Detroit and all thecomplications attendant on that city.The kind of place where money buysa bit more land, perhaps a second bath-room, and so reassures residents thatthey're safely in the bosom of the mid-dle class. Everyelement of Golf Manorinvokes one form of security or an-other, beginning with the name of thesubdivision itself-taken from the 18-hole course at its entrance-and thecommunity in which it is nestled,Commerce Township. The houses andtrees are both old and varied enough tomake Golf Manor feel more like a

Ken Silverstein's last articie for Harper'sMagazine,"The Boeing Formation," appearedin the May 1997 issue. He lives in Washing-ton, D.C.

neighborhood than a subdivision, andthe few features that do convey subdi-

vision-a sign at the entrance saying"We have many children but

none to spare. Pleasedrive care-fully"-have a certain Back

ABOVE, LEFT TO RIGHT: BOY SCOUT

ATOMIC ENERGY MERIT BADGE, DAVID

HAHN'S COPY OF THE GOLDEN BOOK OF

CHEMISTRY EXPERIMENTS, DAVID HAHN

to the Future charm. Most Golf Manorresidents remain there until they die,and then they are replaced by youngcouples with kids. In short, it is the

kind of place where, on a typical day,the only thing lurking around the cor-ner is a Mister Softee ice-cream truck.

But June 26, 1995, was not a typicalday. Ask Dottie Pease. As she turneddown Pinto Drive, Pease saw elevenmen swarming across her carefullymanicured lawn. Their attentionseemed to be focused on the back yardof the house next door, specifically ona large wooden potting shed that

abutted the chain-link fence dividingher property fromher neighbor's.Three of the menhad donned venti-lated moon suitsand were proceed-ing to dismantlethe potting shedwith electric saws,stuffing the piecesof wood into large

steel drums emblazoned with ra-dioactive warning signs.Pease hadnever noticed anything out of theordinary at the house next door.A middle-aged couple, Michael

Polasek and Patty Hahn, lived there.On some weekends, they were joinedby Patty's teenage son, David. As shehuddled with a group of nervous neigh-bors, though, Pease heard one residentclaim to have awoken late one night tosee the potting shed emitting an eerieglow. "1waspretty disturbed," Pease re-calls. "I went inside and called my hus-band. I said, 'Da-a-ve, there are men infunny suits walking around out here.

REPORT 59

You've got to do something.'"What the men in the funny suits

found was that the potting shed wasdangerously irradiated and that thearea's 40,000 residents could be at risk.Publicly, the men in white promisedthe residents of Golf Manor that theyhad nothing to fear, and to this dayneither Pease nor any of the dozen orso people I interviewed knows thereal reason that the EnvironmentalProtection Agency briefly invadedtheir neighborhood. When asked, mostmumble something about a chemicalspill. The truth is far more bizarre: theGolf Manor Superfund cleanup wasprovoked by the boy next door, DavidHahn, who attempted to build a nu-clear breeder reactor in his mother'spotting shed as part of a Boy Scoutmerit-badge project.

It seems remarkable that David'sstory hasn't already wended its waythrough all forms of journalism andbecome the stuff of legend, but at thetime the EPA refused to give outDavid's name, and although a few lo-cal reporters learned it, neither he norany family members agreed to be in-terviewed. Even the federal and stateofficials who oversaw the cleanuplearned only a small parr of what tookplace in the potting shed at GolfManor because David, fearing legalrepercussions, told them almost noth-ing about his experiments. Then in1996, Jay Gourley, a correspondentwith the Natural Resources News Ser-vice in Washington, D.c., came acrossa tiny newspaper item about the caseand contacted David Hahn. Gourleylater passed on his research to me, andI subsequently interviewed the story'sprotagonists, including David-nowa twenty-two-year-old sailor stationedin Norfolk, Virginia.

I met with David in the hope ofmaking sense not only of his experi-ments but of him. The archetypalAmerican suburban boy learns howto hit a fadeaway jump shot, change acar's oil, perform some minor carpen-try feats. If he's a Boy Scout he mas-ters the art of starting a fire by rubbingtwo sticks together, and if he's a typ-ical adolescent pyro, he transformstennis-ball cans into cannons. DavidHahn taught himself to build a neu-tron gun. He figured out a way to dupeofficials at the Nuclear Regulatory

60 HARPER'S MAGAZINE / NOVEMBER 1998

Commission into providing him withcrucial information he needed in hisattempt to build a breeder reactor, andthen he obtained and purified ra-dioactive elements such as.radium andthorium.

I had seen childhood photographsof David in which he looked perfect-ly normal, even angelic, with blondhair and hazel-green eyes, and, as hegrew older, gangly limbs and a peach-fuzz mustache. Still, when I went tomeet him in Norfolk, I was anticipat-ing some physical manifestation ofbrilliance or obsession. An Einsteinor a Kaczynski. But all I saw was abeefier version of the clean-cut kid inthe pictures. David's manner was odd-

ly dispassionate, though polite, untilwe began to discuss his nuclear ad-ventures. Then, for five hours, light-ing and grinding out cigarettes for em-phasis, David enthused about laboringin his backyard laboratory. He toldme how he used coffee filters and pick-le jars to handle deadly substancessuch as radium and nitric acid, andhe sheepishly divulged the variouscover stories and aliases he employedto obtain the radioactive materials. Ashy and withdrawn teenager, Davidhad confided in only a few friendsabout his project and never allowedanyone to witness his experiments.His breeder-reactor project was ameans-albeit an unorthodox one-of escaping the trauma of adolescence."I was very emotional as a kid," hetold me, "and those experiments gaveme a way to get away from that. Theygave me some respect."

You-Scientist!-The Golden Book of Chemistry

Experiments, Chapter 10

InThe Making of theAtomic Bomb,Richard Rhodes notes that thepsychologicalprofilesofpioneering

American physicists are remarkablysimilar. Frequently the eldest son ofan emotionally remote, professionalman, he-almost all were men-was avoracious reader during childhood,tended to feel lonely, and was shy andaloof from classmates.

David's parents, Ken and PattyHahn, divorced when he was a tod-dler. Ken is an automotive engineerfor General Motors, as is his secondwife, Kathy Missig, whom he marriedsoon after the divorce. David lived withhis father and stepmother in a smallsplit-level home in suburban ClintonTownship, about thirty miles north ofDetroit. Ken Hahn worked extraordi-narily long hours for GM. With close-cropped hair and a proclivity for short-sleeved dress shirts, Ken radiates acoolness that, combined with his con-stant preoccupation, must have beenconfounding to a child. When askedabout his undemonstrative nature, Kenattributes it to his German ancestry.Yet for all his starchiness, it was Kathywho was David's chief disciplinarian.

David spent weekends and holidayswith his mother and her boyfriend,Michael Polasek, an amiable but hard-drinking retired forklift operator atGM. Golf Manor is demographicallysimilar to Clinton Township, but thetwo households could not have beenmore different emotionally. PattyHahn committed suicide in the housea few years ago, but Michael still livesthere surrounded by pictures of her.("She was a beautiful person," he says."She was my whole life.") He keepsfive cats and a spotless household, andlooks like a member ofSha Na Na.

Despite the fact that David wasshuf-fledbetween households, his early yearswere seemingly ordinary. He playedbaseball and soccer, joined the BoyScouts, and spent endless hours ex-ploring with his friends. An abruptchange came at the age of ten, whenKathy's father, also an engineer forGM, gave David The Golden Book ofChemistry Experiments. The book

promised to open doors to a brave newworld-"Chemistry means the differ-ence between poverty and starvationand the abundant life," it stated withunwavering optimism-and offered in-structions on how to set up a homelaboratory and conduct experimentsranging from simple evaporation andfiltration to making rayon and alco-hol. David swiftly became immersedand by age twelve was digesting his fa-ther's collegechemistry textbooks with-out difficulty.When he spent the nightat Golf Manor, his mother would oftenwake to find him asleep on the living-room floor surrounded by open vol-umes of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

In his father's house, David set up alaboratory in his small bedroom, wherethe shelves are still lined with bookssuch as Prudent Practices for HandlingHazardous Chemicals in Laborataries andThe Story of AtomicEnergy. He boughtbeakers, Bunsen burners, test tubes,and other items commonly found in achild's chemistry set. David, though,was not conducting the typical ado-lescent experiments. By fourteen, anage at which most boys with a pen-chant for chemistry are conductingrudimentary gunpowder experiments,David had fabricated nitroglycerine.

David's parents admired his interestin science but were alarmed by thechemical spills and blasts that becamea regular event at the Hahn household.After David destroyed his bedroom-the walls were badly pocked, and thecarpet was so stained that it had to beripped out-Ken and Kathy banishedhis experiments to the basement.

Which wasfine with David. Scienceallowed him to distance himself fromhis parents, to create and destroy things,to break the rules, and to escape intosomething he was a success at, whilesublimating a teenager's senseof failure,anger, and embarrassment into somereally big explosions. David held a se-ries of after-school jobs at fast-foodjoints, grocery stores, and furniturewarehouses, but work was merely ameans of financing his experiments.Never an enthusiastic student and al-waysa horrific speller,David fell behindin school. During his junior year atChippewa Valley High School-at atime when he was secretly conductingnuclear experiments in his back yard-David nearly failedstate math and read-

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ing tests required for graduation(though he aced the test in science).Ken Gherardini, who taught Davidconceptual physics, remembers him asan excellent pupil on the rare occa-sions when he was interested in class-work but otherwise indifferent to hisstudies. "His dream in life was to col-lect a sample of every element on theperiodic table," Gherardini told mewith a laugh during an interview atChippewa Valley before his 8:20 A.M.class. "I don't know about you, but mydream at that age was to buy a car."

David's scientific preoccupation leftless and less time for friends, thoughthroughout much of high school hedid have a girlfriend, HeatherBeaudette, three years his junior.Heather says he was sweet and caring(she once returned from a weeklongtrip to Florida to find a pile of lengthylove letters) but not always the per-fect date. Heather's mom, Donna Bun-nell, puts it this way:"He wasa nice kidand always presentable, but [in thedays before her second wedding] wehad to tell him not to talk to anybody.He could eat and drink but, for God'ssake, don't talk to the guests about thefood's chemical composition."

Not even his scout troop was sparedDavid's scientific enthusiasm. He onceappeared at a scout meeting with abright orange face caused by an over-dose of canrhaxanthin, which he wastaking to test methods of artificial tan-ning. One summer at scout camp,David's fellow campers blew a hole inthe communal tent when they acci-dentally ignited the stockpile of pow-dered magnesium he had brought tomake fireworks. Another year, Davidwas expelled from camp when-whilemost of his friends were sneaking intothe nearby Girl Scouts' camp-he stolea number of smoke detectors to disas-semble for parts he required for his ex-periments. "Our summer vacation wasscrewed up when we got a call tellingus to pick David up early from camp,"his stepmother recalls with a sigh.

Up to this point the most illicit ofDavid's concoctions were fireworksandmoonshine. But convinced that David'sexperiments and increasingly erraticbehavior were signs that he was mak-ing and selling drugs, Ken and Kathybegan to spot-check the public library,where David told them he studied. In-

variably, David would be there aspromised, surrounded by a huge pile ofchemistry books. But Ken and Kathywere not assuaged,and, worried that hewould level their home, they prohibit-ed David from being there alone, lock-ing him out when they were away,evenon quick errands, and setting a time

for their return so that he could getback in. Kathy began routinely search-ing David's room and disposing of anychemicals and equipment she foundhidden under the bed and deep with-in the closet.

David was not deterred. One nightas Ken and Kathy were sitting in theliving room watching TV, the housewas rocked by an explosion in the base-ment. There they found David lyingsemiconscious on the floor, his eye-browssmoking.Unaware that red phos-phorus is pyrophoric, David had beenpounding it with a screwdriver and ig-nited it. He was rushed to the hospitalto have his eyes flushed, but evenmonths later David had to make regu-lar trips to an ophthalmologist to havepieces of the plastic phosphorus con-tainer plucked carefully from his eyes.

Kathv then forbade David from ex-perirnenting in her home. So he shift-ed his base of operations to his moth-er's potting shed in Golf Manor. BothPatty Hahn and Michael Polasek ad-mired David for the endless hours hespent in his new lab, but neither ofthem had any idea what he was up to.

Sure, they thought it was odd thatDavid often wore a gas mask in theshed and would sometimes discard hisclothing after working there until twoin the morning, but they chalked itup to their own limited education.Michael says that David tried to ex-plain his experiments but that "whathe told me went right over my head."One thing still sticks out, though.David's potting-shed project had some-thing to do with creating energy. "He'dsay, 'One of these days we're gonnarun out of oil.' He wanted to do some-thing about that."

The force hidden in the atom will beturned into light and heat and power foreveryday uses. Chemists of the fWU1"e,working with their brother-scientists, thephysicists, will find new ways of harness-ing and using the atoms of numerous el-ements-some of them unknown to thescientists of today. Do you want to sharein the making of that astonishing andpromising future?

-The Golden Book of ChemistryExperiments

LikeMichael, few people whomDavid confided in understoodwhat he was doing. Ken Hahn,

who had taken chemistry courses incollege, could follow some of whatDavid told him but thought he was ex-aggerating for attention. "I never sawhim turn green or glow in the dark," hesays."I was probably too easy on him."

It probably didn't feel that way toDavid. Although Ken is immenselyproud of David's experiments now thatthey have a certain notoriety, at thetime they represented a breakdown indiscipline. As fathers are wont to do,Ken felt the solution lay in a goal thathe didn't himself achieve as a child-Eagle Scout. As teenagers are wont todo, David subverted that goal.

In addition to showing "scout spirit,"Eagle Scouts must earn twenty-onemerit badges. Eleven are mandatory,such as First Aid and Citizenship inthe Community. The final ten are op-tional; scouts can choose from dozensof choices ranging fromAmerican Busi-ness to Woodwork. David elected toearn a merit badge in Atomic Energy.His scoutmaster, Joe Auito, who liveson a rural road an hour or so north of

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David was awarded his Atomic En-ergy merit badge on May 10, 1991, fivemonths shy of his fifteenth birthday.To earn it he made a drawing showinghow nuclear fission occurs, visited ahospital radiology unit to learn aboutthe medical uses of radioisotopes, 1 and

I Individual atoms of an element have thesame number of protons in their nuclei. This"atomic number" detennines the element'schemical properties and position in the periodictable. The number of neutrons within atomsof the same elements can vary, however.Known as isotopes, these variations haveunique physical properties because the numberof neutrons affects the atom's mass. Most el-ements have at least two naturally occurring,stable isotopes. But isotopes of heavier ele-ments (those with more protons) are often un-stable. Called radioisotopes, and often artifi-cially produced, these nuclei undergo somefonn of radioactive decay-alpha, beta, orgamma-to become more stable. In alpha de-cay, the nucleus loses two protons and twOneutrons, thus transforming into another ele-ment two atomic numbers below it on the pe-riodic table. In beta decay, either a neutron isconverted into a proton, and the atomic num-ber rises, or the opposite occurs, pushing theatomic number down. Gamma radiation-in which energy is emitted but no transforma-tion occurs--can accompany alpha or betadecay (where the atomic number falls) or canoccur on its own. Americium-241, for ex-ample, is a radioisotope of americium. Itsatomic number is 95, its atomic mass numberis 241 , and it becomes neptunium- 23 7 throughalpha decay.

built a model reactor using a juice can,coat hangers, soda straws, kitchenmatches, and rubber bands. By now,though, David had far grander ambi-tions. As Auito's wife and troop trea-surer, Barbara, recalls: "The typical kid[working on the merit badge] wouldhave gone to a doctor's officeand askedabout the X-ray machine. Dave hadto go out and try to build a reactor."

What is a breeder reactor? This sim-plistic description comes from a pub-lication that David obtained from theDepartment of Energy (DOE): "Imag-ine you have a car and begin a longdrive. When you start, you have half atank of gas. When you return home,instead of being nearly empty, yourgas tank is full. A breeder reactor islike this magic car. A breeder reactornot only generates electricity, but italso produces new fuel."

All reactors, conventional andbreeder, rely on a critical pile of a nat-urally radioactive element-typicallyuranium-235 or plutonium-239-asthe "fuel" for a sustained chain of re-actions known as fission. Fission oc-curs when a neutron combines withthe nucleus of a radioisotope, say ura-nium-235, transforming it into urani-um-236. This new isotope ishighly un-stable and immediately splits in half,forming two smaller nuclei, and re-leasing a great deal of radiant energy(some of which is heat) and severalneutrons. These neutrons are absorbedby other uranium-235 atoms to beginthe process again.

A breeder reactor is configured sothat a core of plutonium-239 is sur-rounded by a "blanket" of uranium-238. When the plutonium gives offneutrons, they are absorbed by the ura-nium-238 to become uranium-239,which in turn decays by emitting be-ta rays and is transformed into neptu-nium-239. Following another stage of"radioactive decay," neptunium be-comes plutonium-239, which can re-plenish the fuel core.

The nuclear industry used to toutbreeders as the magical solution to thenation's energyneeds. The governmenthad opened up two experimental breed-ers at a test site in Idaho by 1961. Amidgreat fanfare, in 1963 Detroit Edisonopened the Enrico Fermi I power plant,the nation's first and only commer-cially run breeder reactor. The follow-

ing decade, Congress appropriated bil-lions of dollars for the Clinch RiverBreeder Reactor in Tennessee. Hopesran so high that Glenn Seaborg, chair-man of the Atomic EnergyCommissionduring the Nixon years, predicted thatbreeders would be the backbone of anemerging nuclear economy and thatplutonium might be "a logical con-tender to replace gold as the standardof our monetary system."

Such optimism proved to be un-warranted. The first Idaho breeder hadto be shut down after suffering a par-tial core meltdown; the second breed-er generated electricity but not newfuel. The Fermi plant-located just 60miles from Clinton Township-wasplagued by mechanical problems, ac-cidents, and budget overruns, and pro-duced electricity so expensive that De-troit Edison never even bothered tobreak down the costs. In 1966, theplant's core suffered a partial melt-down after the cooling system mal-functioned; six years later the plantwas shut down permanently. In 1983,when it was estimated that comple-tion costs would deplete much of thefederal budget for energy research anddevelopment, Congress finally killedthe Clinch River program.

If he knew of such setbacks, Davidwas in no way deterred by them. Hisinspiration came from the nuclear pi-oneers of the late nineteenth and ear-ly twentieth centuries: Antoine Hen-ri Becquerel, the French physicist who,along with Pierre and Marie Curie, re-ceived the Nobel Prize in chemistryin 1903 for discovering radioactivity;Frederic and Irene [eliot-Curie, whoreceived the prize in 1935 for produc-ing the first artificial radioisotope; SirJames Chadwick, who won the NobelPrize in physics the same year for dis-covering the neutron; and Enrico Fer-mi, who created the world's first sus-tainable nuclear chain reaction, acrucial step leading to the productionof atomic energy and atomic bornbs.l

2 Another role model, similar to David intemperament, was the Englishman FrancisWilliam Aston. He invented the mass spec-trograph in 1920, which he used to identifymore than 200 isotopes. As a child, u,-ritesRichard Rhodes, Aston "made picric-acidbombs from soda-bottle cartridges and de-signed and launched huge tissue-paper fireballoons .... "

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Unlike his predecessors, however,David did not have vast financial sup-port from the state, no laboratory savefor a musty potting shed, no properinstruments or safety devices, and, byfar his chief impediment, no legalmeans of obtaining radioactive mate-rials. To get around this last obstacle,David utilized a number of cover sto-ries and concocted identities, plus aGeiger-counter kit he ordered from amail-order house in Scottsdale, Ari-zona, which he assembled and mount-ed to the dashboard of his burgundyPontiac 6000.

David hadn't hit on the idea to tryto build a breeder reactor when he be-gan his nuclear experiments at the ageof fifteen, but in a step down that path,he was already determined to "irradi-ate anything" he could. To do that hehad to build a "gun" that could bom-bard isotopes with neutrons. Davidwrote to a number of groups listed inhis merit-badge pamphlet-the DOE,the Nuclear Regulatory Commission(NRC), the American Nuclear Soci-ety, the Edison Electric Institute, andthe Atomic Industrial Forum, the nu-clear-power industry's trade group-in hopes of discovering how he mightobtain, from both natural and com-mercial sources, the radioactive rawmaterials he needed to build his neu-tron gun and experiment with it. Bywriting up to twenty letters a day andclaiming to be a physics instructor atChippewa Valley High School, Davidsayshe obtained "tons" of informationfrom those and other groups, thoughsome of it was of only marginal value.The American Nuclear Society sentDavid a teacher's guide called "Goin'Fission,"which featured an Albert Ein-stein cartoon character: "I'm Albert.Und today, ve are gonna go fission.No, ve don't need any smelly bait andder won't be any fish to clean. I meanfission, not fishin'."

Other organizations proved to befar more helpful, and none more thanthe NRC. Again posing as a physicsteacher, David managed to engage theagency's director of isotope produc-tion and distribution, Donald Erb, ina scientific discussion by mail. Erb of-fered David tips on isolating certainradioactive elements, provided a listof isotopes that can sustain a chain re-action, and imparted a piece of infer-

mation that would soon prove to be vi-tal to David's plans: "Nothing pro-duces neutrons ... as well as berylli-um." When David asked Erb about therisks posed by such radioactive mate-rials, the NRC official assured "Pro-fessorHahn" that the "real dangers arevery slight," since possession"of any ra-dioactive materials in quantities andforms sufficient to pose any hazard issubject to Nuclear Regulatory Com-mission (or equivalent) licensing."David says the NRC also sent himpricing data and commercial sourcesfor some of the radioactive wares hewanted to purchase, ostensibly for thebenefit of his eager students. "TheNRC gave me all the information Ineeded," he later recalled. "All I hadto do was go out and get the materials."

The newspapers have published nu-merous diagrams, not very helpful to theaverage man, of protons and neutronsdoing their stuff. ... But curiously littlehas been said, at any rate in print, aboutthe question that is of most urgent inter-est to aUof us, namely, "How difficult arethese things to manufacture?"

-George Orwell, "You and theAtom Bomb," 1945

Armed with information fromhis friends in government andindustry, David typed up a list

of sources for fourteen radioactive iso-topes.Americium-241, he learned fromthe Boy Scour atomic-energy booklet,could be found in smoke detectors; ra-dium-226, in antique luminous dialclocks; uranium-238 and minute quan-tities of uranium-235, in a black orecalled pitchblende; and thorium-232,in Coleman-style gas lanterns.

To obtain americium- 241, Davidcontacted smoke-detector companiesand claimed that he needed a largenumber of the devices for a schoolproject. One company agreed to sellhim about a hundred broken detec-tors for a dollar apiece. (He also triedto "collect" detectors while at scoutcamp.) David wasn't sure where theamericium-241 was located, so hewrote to BRK Electronics in Aurora,Illinois. A customer-service represen-tative named Beth Weber wrote backto say she'd be happy to help out with"your report." She explained that each

detector contains only a tiny amountof americium- 241, which is sealed in agold matrix "to make sure that corro-sion does not break it down and re-lease it." Thanks to Weber's tip, Davidextracted the americium componentsand then welded them together with ablowtorch.

As it decays, amertcium-Z'[l emitsalpha rays composed of protons andneutrons. David put the lump of ameri-cium inside a hollow block of lead witha tiny hole pricked in one side so thatalpha rays would stream out. In frontof the lead block he placed a sheet ofaluminum. Aluminum atoms absorbalpha rays and in the process kick outneutrons. Since neutrons have nocharge, and thus cannot be measuredby a Geiger counter, David had noway of knowing whether the gun wasworking until he recalled that paraffinthrows off protons when hit by neu-trons. David aimed the apparatus atsome paraffin, and his Geiger counterregistered what he assumed was a pro-ton stream. His neutron gun, crudebut effective, was ready.

With neutron gun in hand, Davidwas ready to irradiate. He could haveconcentrated on transforming previ-ously nonradioactive elements, but ina decision that was both indicative ofhis personality and instrumental to hislater attempt to build a breeder reac-tor, he wanted to use the gun on ra-dioisotopes to increase the chances ofmaking them fissionable. He thoughtthat uranium-235, which is used inatomic weapons, would provide the"biggest reaction." He scoured hun-dreds of miles of upper Michigan inhis Pontiac looking for "hot rocks"with his Geiger counter, but all hecould find was a quarter trunkload ofpitchblende on the shores of LakeHuron. Deciding to pursue a more bu-reaucratic approach, he wrote to aCzechoslovakian firm that sells urani-um to commercial and university buy-ers, whose name was provided, he toldme, by the NRC. Claiming to be aprofessor buying materials for a nu-clear-research laboratory, he obtaineda few samples of a black ore-eitherpitchblende or uranium dioxide, bothof which contain small amounts of ura-nium-235 and uranium-238.

David pulverized the ores with ahammer, thinking that he could then

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use nitric acid to isolate uranium. Un-able to find a commercial source fornitric acid-probably because it isused in the manufacture of explosivesand thus is tightly controlled-Davidmade his own by heating saltpeterand sodium bisulfate, then bubblingthe gas that was released through acontainer, of water, producing nitricacid. He then mixed the acid withthe powdered ore and boiled it, end-ing up with something that "lookedlike a dirty milk shake." Next hepoured the "milk shake" through acoffee filter, hoping that the urani-um would pass through the filter. ButDavid miscalculated uranium's solu-bility, and whatever amount was pre-sent was trapped in the filter, mak-ing it difficult to purify further.

Frustrated at his inability to isolatesufficient supplies of uranium, Davidturned his attention to thorium-232,which when bombarded with neutronsproduces uranium-233, a man-madefissionable element (and, although hemight not have known it then, onethat can be substituted for plutoniumin breeder reactors). Discovered in 1828and named after the Norse god Thor,thorium has a very high melting point,and is thus used in the manufacture ofairplane engine parts that reach ex-tremelyhigh temperatures. David knewfrom his merit-badge pamphlet thatthe "mantle" used in commercial gaslanterns-the part that looks like adoll's stocking and conducts theflame-is coated with a compound con-taining thorium-232. He bought thou-sands oflantern mantles from surplusstores and, using the blowtorch, re-duced them into a pile of ash.

David still had to isolate the thori-um-232 from the ash. Fortunately, heremembered reading in one of his dad'schemistry books that lithium is proneto binding with oxygen-meaning, inthis context, that it would rob thoriumdioxide of its oxygen content and leavea cleaner form of thorium. David pur-chased $1,000 worth of lithium bat-teries and extracted the element bycutting the batteries in half with a pairof wire cutters. He placed the lithiumand thorium dioxide together in a ballof aluminum foil and heated the ballwith a Bunsen burner. Eureka! David'smethod purified thorium to at least9,000 times the level found in nature

68 HARPER'S MAGAZINE! NOVEMBER 1998

and 170 times the level that requiresNRC licensing.

At this point, David could have usedhis americium neutron gun to trans-form thorium-232 into fissionable ura-nium-233. But the americium he hadwas not capable of producing enoughneutrons, so he began preparing radi-um for an improved irradiating gun.

Radium was used in paint that ren-dered luminescent the faces of clocksand automobile and airplane instru-ment panels until the late 1960s,whenit was discovered that many clockpainters, who routinely licked theirbrushes to make a fine point, died of

cancer. David began visiting junkyardsand antiques stores in search of radium-coated dashboard panels or clocks.Once he found such an item, he'd chippaint from the instruments and col-lect it in pill vials. It was slowgoing un-til one day, driving through ClintonTownship to visit his girlfriend,Heather, he noticed that his Geigercounter went wild ashe passedGloria'sResale Boutique! Antique. The pro-prietor, Gloria Genette, still recallsthe day when she was called at homeby a store employee who said that apolite young man was anxious to buyan old table clock with a tinted greendial but wondered if she'd come downin price. She would. David bought theclock for $10. Inside he discovered avial of radium paint left behind by aworker either accidentally or as a cour-tesy so that the clock's owner couldtouch up the dial when it began tofade. David was so overjoyed that he

dropped by the boutique later thatnight to leave a note for Gloria, tellingher that if she received another "lu-minus [sic] clock" to contact him im-mediately, "I will pay any some [sic)ofmoney to obtain one."

To concentrate the radium, Davidsecured a sample of barium sulfatefrom the X-ray ward at a local hospi-tal (staff there handed over the sub-stance because they remembered himfrom his merit-badge project) andheated it until it liquefied. After mix-ing the barium sulfate with the radi-um paint chips, he strained the brewthrough a coffee filter into a beakerthat began to glow. This time, Davidhad judged the solubility of the twosubstances correctly; the radium so-lution passed through to the beaker.He then dehydrated the solution intocrystalline salts, which he could packinto the cavity of another lead blockto build a new gun.

Whether David fully realized it ornot, by handling purified radium hewas truly putting himself in danger.Nevertheless, he now proceeded to ac-quire another neutron emitter to re-place the aluminum used in his previ-ous neutron gun. Faithful to Erb'sinstructions, he secured a strip of beryl-lium (which is a much richer source ofneutrons than aluminum) from thechemistry department at MacombCommunity College-a friend whoattended the school swiped it forhim-and placed it in front of the leadblock that held the radium. His cutelittle americium gun was now a morepowerful radium gun. David began tobombard his thorium and uraniumpowders in the hopes of producing atleast some fissionable atoms. He mea-sured the results with his Geigercounter, but while the thorium seemedto grow more radioactive, the uraniumremained a disappointment.

Once again, "ProfessorHahn" spranginto action, writing his old friend Erbat the NRC to discuss the problem.The NRC had the answer.David's neu-trons were too "fast" for the uranium}

3 Manhattan Project scientists discovered thatsome neutrons can move at speeds of about 17million miles per hour. If they are slowed downor "moderated," to about 5 ,000 miles perhour, they have a better chance of being ab-sorbed by another arom.

He would have to slow them down us-ing a filter of water, deuterium, or tri-tium. Water would have sufficed, butDavid likes a challenge. Consulting hislist of commercially available radioac-tive sources,he discovered that tritium,a radioactive material used to boost thepower of nuclear weapons, is found inglow-in-the-dark gun and bow sights,which David promptly bought fromsporting-goods stores and mail-ordercatalogues. He removed the tritiumcontained in a waxy substance insidethe sights, and then, using a variety ofpseudonyms, returned the sights to thestore or manufacturer for repair--eachtime collecting another tiny quantity oftritium. When he had enough, Davidsmeared the waxy substance over theberyllium strip and targeted the gun aturanium powder. He carefully moni-tored the results with his Geigercounter over several weeks, and it ap-peared that the powder was growingmore radioactive by the day.

Now seventeen, David hit on theidea of building a model breeder re-actor. He knew that without a criticalpile of at least thirty pounds of en-riched uranium he had no chance ofinitiating a sustained chain reaction,but he was determined to get as far ashe could by trying to get his various ra-dioisotopes to interact with one an-other. That way, he now says, "nomatter whafhappened there wouldbe something changing into some-thing-some kind of action going onthere." His blueprint was a schemat-ic of a checkerboard breeder reactorhe'd seen in one of his father's col-lege textbooks. Ignoring any thoughtof safety, David took the highly ra-dioactive radium and americium out oftheir respective lead casings and, afteranother round of filingand pulverizing,mixed those isotopes with berylliumand aluminum shavings, all of whichhe wrapped in aluminum foil. Whatwere once the neutron sources for hisguns became a makeshift "core" forhis reactor. He surrounded this ra-dioactive ball with a "blanket" com-posed of tiny foil-wrapped cubes ofthorium ash and uranium powder,which were stacked in an alternatingpattern with carbon cubes and tenu-ously held together with duct tape.

David monitored his "breeder reac-tor" at the Golf Manor laboratory with

his Geiger counter. "It was radioactiveas heck," he says. "The level of radia-tion after a few weeks was far greaterthan it was at the time of assembly. Iknow I transformed some radioactivematerials. Even though there was nocritical pile, I know that some of the re-actions that go on in a breeder reactorwent on to a minute extent."

Finally, David, ~hose safety pre-cautions had thus far consisted ofwearing a makeshift lead poncho andthrowing away his clothes and chang-ing his shoes following a session inthe potting shed, began to realize that,sustained reaction or not, he could beputting himself and others in danger.(One tip-off was when the radiationwas detectable through concrete.) [imMiller, a nuclear-savvy high-schoolfriend in whom David had confided,warned him that real reactots use con-trol rods to regulate nuclear reactions.Miller recommended cobalt, whichabsorbs neutrons but does not itselfbecome fissionable. "Reactors get hot,it's just a fact," Miller, a nervous, skin-ny twenty-two-year-old, said duringan interview at a Burger King in Clin-ton Township where he worked as acook. David purchased a set of cobaltdrill bits at a local hardware store andinserted them between the thoriumand uranium cubes. But the cobaltwasn't sufficient. When his Geigercounter began picking up radiationfive doors down from his mom's house,David decided that he had "too muchradioactive stuff in one place" and be-gan to disassemble the reactor. He'placed the thorium pellets in a shoe-box that he hid in his mother's house,left the radium and americium in theshed, and packed most of the rest of hisequipment into the trunk of the Pon-tiac 6000.

\VASTE DISPOSAL. If you candump your waste directly into the kitchendrain (NOT into the sink), you are allright. If not, collect it in a plastic pail tobe thrown out when you're finished.

-The Golden Book ofChemistry Experiments

At 2:40 A.M. on August 31,1994, the Clinton Townshippolice responded to a call con-

cerning a young man who had been

spotted in a residential neighborhood,apparently stealing tires from a car.When the police arrived, David toldthem he was waiting to meet a friend.Unconvinced, officers decided tosearch his car. When they opened thetrunk they discovered a toolbox shutwith a padlock and sealed with ducttape for good measure. The trunk alsocontained over fiftyfoil-wrapped cubesof mysterious gray powder, small disksand cylindrical metal objects, lanternmantles, mercury switches, a clockface, ores, fireworks, vacuum tubes,and assorted chemicals and acids. Thepolice were especially alarmed by thetoolbox, which David warned themwas radioactive and which they fearedwas an atomic bomb.

For reasons that are hard to fathom,Sergeant Joseph Mertes, one of thearresting officers, ordered a car con-taining what he noted in his reportwas "a potential improvised explo-sive device" to be towed to policeheadquarters. "It probably shouldn'thave been done, but we thought thatthe car had been used in the com-mission of a crime," Police Chief AlErnst now says sheepishly. "When Icame in at 6:30 in the morning it wasalready there."

The police called in the MichiganState Police Bomb Squad to examinethe Pontiac and the State Departmentof Public Health (DPH) to supply ra-diological assistance. The good news,the two teams discovered, was thatDavid's toolbox was not an atomicbomb. The bad news was that David'strunk did contain radioactive materi-als, including concentrations of thori-um-"not found in nature, at least notin Michigan"-and americium. Thatdiscovery automatically triggered theFederal Radiological Emergency Re-sponse Plan, and state officials soonwere embroiled in tense phone con-sultations with the DOE, EPA, FBI,and NRC.

With the police, David was largelyuncooperative and taciturn. He pro-vided his father's address but didn'tmention his mother's house or his pot-ting-shed laboratory. It wasn't untilThanksgiving Day that Dave Minnaar,a DPH radiological expert, finally in-terviewed David. David told Minnaarthat he had been trying to make tho-rium in a form he could use to produce

70 HARPER'S MAGAZINE I NOVEMBER 1998

energyand that he hoped "his successeswould help him earn his Eagle Scoutstatus." David also finally admitted tohaving a backyard laboratory.

help. The NRC licenses nuclear plantsand research facilities and deals withany nuclear accidents that take placeat those sites. David, of course, was

THE EPA CLEANS OUT DAVID'S SHED

On November 29, state radiologicalexperts surveyed the potting shed.They found aluminum pie pans, jars ofacids, Pyrex cups, milk crates, and oth-er materials strewn about, much of itcontaminated with what subsequentofficial reports would call "excessivelevels" of radioactive material, espe-cially americium-241 and thorium-232. How high? A vegetable can, forexample, registered at 50,000 countsper minute-about 1,000 times high-er than normal levels of backgroundradiation. But although Minnaar'stroops didn't know it at the time, theyconducted their survey long afterDavid's mother, alerted by Ken andKathy and petrified that the govern-ment would take her home away as aresult of her son's experiments, hadransacked the shed and discarded mostof what she found, including his neu-tron gun, the radium, pellets of thori-um that were far more radioactivethan what the health officials found,and several quarts of radioactive pow-der. "The funny thing is," David nowsays, "they only got the garbage, andthe garbage got all the good stuff."

After determining that no radioac-tive materials had leaked outside theshed, state authorities sealed it and pe-titioned the federal government for

not an NRC-licensed operation, so itwas determined that the EPA, whichresponds to emergencies involving lostor abandoned atomic materials, shouldbe contacted for assistance. In a memoto the EPA's Emergency Response andEnforcement Branch, the Departmentof Public Health noted that the mate-rials discovered in David's lab wereregulated under the Federal AtomicEnergy Act and that the "extent ofthe radioactive material contamina-tion within a private citizen's proper-ty beg for a controlled remediationthat is beyond our authority or re-sources to oversee."

EPA officials arrived in GolfManor on January 25, 1995-fivemonths after David had beenstopped by the police-to conducttheir own survey of the shed. Their"action memo" noted that condi-tions at the site "present an immi-nent and substantial endangermentto public health or welfare or theenvironment," and that there was"actual or potential exposure tonearby human populations, animals,or food chain .... " The memo fur-ther stated that adverse conditionssuch as heavy wind, rain, or firecould cause the "contaminants tomigrate or be released."

Photograph by U .s. EPA, Region 5

A Superfund cleanup took place be-tween June 26 and 28 at a cost of about$60,000. After the moon-suited work-ers dismantled the potting shed withelectric saws, they loaded the remainsinto thirty-nine sealed barrels placedaboard a semitrailer bound for Envi-rocare, a dump facility located in themiddle of the Great Salt Lake Desert.There, the remains of David's experi-ments were entombed along with tonsof low-level radioactive debris fromthe government's atomic-bomb facto-ries, plutonium-production facilities,and contaminated industrial sites. Ac-cording to the officialassessment, therewas no noticeable damage to flora orfauna in the back yard in Golf Manor,but 40,000 nearby residents could havebeen put at risk during David's years ofexperimentation due to the dangersposed by the release of radioactive dustand radiation.

Last May, I made the 90-mile drivefrom Detroit to Lansing, where DaveMinnaar works in a dreary buildingthat houses several state environ-mental agencies. Because Patty Hahnhad cleaned out the shed before Min-naar's men arrived on the scene, henever knew that David had built neu-tron guns or that he had obtained ra-dium. Nor did he understand, until Itold him, that the cubes of thoriumpowder found by police at the time ofDavid's arrest were the building blocksfor a model breeder reactor. "Theseare conditions that regulatory agenciesnever envision," says Minnaar. "It'ssimply presumed that the average per-son wouldn't have the technology ormaterials required to experiment inthese areas."

"The real danger . . . lies in the ra-dioactive properties of these elements.[Some] migrate to the bone marrow, wheretheir radiation interferes with the produc-tion of red blood cells. Less than one-mil-lionth of a gram can be fataL"

-from David's notes

David went into a serious de-pression after the federal au-thorities shut down his labo-

ratory. Years of painstaking work hadbeen thrown in the garbage or buriedbeneath the sands ofUtah. Students atChippewa Valley had taken to calling

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Anagrams are indicated with an asterisk (*) .

TOP ROW: p(h)easant.BOTTOM ROW: D.(own-war)D.

KING'S ROOK: prince (homonym); ere (hidden); epee (ho-mophone); (t lendls): d-osed". KING'S KNIGHT: (r)heft;tier (two mngs.), r-in-G; Gore (two rnngs.); eddy (hidden);year (ear[l]y*); (b)rave; e.g.vos (rev.): S.(he)S.; Soho*.KING'S BISHOP: (b)eagle; E-as-Y; yam (rev); me-ow.KING: ALAN (King); ELLERY (Queen); JOEY (Bishop);WAYNE (Knight); VERNON (Castle). QUEEN: sank (ho-mophone); killing (two mngs.): gorgons*; S-N(O)-W.QUEEN'S BISHOP: A-LP; p-I-u-s (last letters); sewer (pun);Rig-a. QUEEN'S KNIGHT: nine (homophone); el(U)I; KR KKt KB

Lo(ui lse: ESP(y); yaks (two mngs.): s-curfs); (squir)rels; slur (two mngs.).tank(a-rd)s; s-pewts); w-ave; (f)eels; sod (rev.)

SOLUTION TO OCTOBER DOUBLE ACROSTIC (NO. 189). KENNETH A. BROWN: FOUR COR-NERS. High cliffs ... rise ... from the highway's edge ... the same brightly colored rocks that ...form a backdrop for Ghost Ranch, where Georgia O'Keeffe came to live and paint, creating herstark and surreal images of the Southwest.

CONTEST RULES: Send the quotation, the name of the author, and the title of the work, togetherwith your name and address, to Double Acrostic No. 190, Harper's Magazine, 666 Broadway, NewYork, N.Y. 10012. If you already subscribe to Harper's, please include a copy of your latest mailinglabel. Entries must be received by November 9. Senders of the first three correct solutions opened atrandom will receive one-year subscriptions to Harper's Magazine. The solution will be printed in theDecember issue. Winners of the September Double Acrostic (No. 188) are Marjorie Holstege, PortAngeles, Washington; Sam Cargill, Greenville, South Carolina; and Paul Abrahams, Deerfield,Massachusetts.

him "Radioactive Boy," and when hisgirlfriend, Heather, sent David Valen-tine's balloons at his high school, theywere seized by the principal, who ap-parently feared they had been inflatedwith chemical gases David needed tocontinue his experiments. In a finalindignity, some area scout leaders at-tempted (and failed) to deny Davidhis Eagle Scout status, saying that hisextracurricular merit-badge activitieshad endangered the community.

In the fall of 1995, Ken and Kathydemanded that David enroll in Ma-comb Community College. He ma-jored in metallurgy but skipped manyof his classesand spent much of the dayin bed or driving in circles around theirblock. Finally, Ken and Kathy gavehim an ultimatum: Join the armedforces or move out of the house. Theycalled the local recruiting office,whichsent a representative to their house orcalled nearly every day until David fi-nally gave in. After completing bootcamp last year, he was stationed onthe nuclear-powered USS Enterpriseaircraft carrier.

Alas, David's duties, as a lowly sea-man, are of the deck-swabbing andpotato-peeling variety. But long afterhis shipmates have gone to sleep,Davidstays up studying topics that interesthim-currently steroids, melanin, ge-netic codes, antioxidants, prototypereactors, amino acids, and criminal law.And it isperhaps best that he does notwork on the ship's eight reactors, forEPA scientists worry that his previousexposure to radioactivity may havegreatly cut short his life. All the ra-dioactive materials he experimentedwith can enter the body through in-gestion, inhalation, or skin contactand then deposit in the bones and or-gans,where they can cause a host of ail-ments, including cancer. Because it isso potent, the radium that David wasexposed to in a relatively small, en-closed space is most worrisome of all.Back in 1995, the EPA arranged forDavid to undergo a full examination atthe nearby Fermi nuclear power plant.David, fearful of what he might learn,refused. Now, though, he's lookingahead. "I wanted to make a scratch inlife,"he explains when I ask him abouthis early years ofnuclear research. "I'vestill got time. I don't believe I tookmore than five years off of my life." _