That Time a Teenager Built a Nuclear Reactor in His Backyard

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prompted by patti han's son david who at the age of 17 had tried to build his own working nuclear reactor this is the bizarre tale of the radioactive boy scout david charles hand was born on october 30th 1976 in royal oak michigan to ken and pattyhan his parents divorced when he was very young and for most of his childhood he spent his weeks with his father a gm automotive engineer and his weekend with his mother and her boyfriend michael polisek a gm forklift driver despite being constantly shuffled between households david's early childhood was relatively normal he joined the boy scouts played baseball and spent hours playing with his friends though he remained relatively shy and withdrawn child an indifferent student and a terrible speller he fell behind in school nearly failing his state math and writing exams but according to his science teacher ken garadini david was fascinated with chemistry and could be an extremely bright student when the class aligned with his interests his dream in life was to collect a sample of every element on the periodic table i don't know about you but my dream at that age was to buy a car a major turning point in his life came when his stepmother kathy misig gave him a copy of the golden book of chemistry experiments published in 1960 the book was a monument to mid-century scientific enthusiasm filled with passages proclaiming how chemistry could uplift humanity and create a brighter tomorrow it also contained experiments that would be unthinkable in a modern children's textbook such as how to make chloroform and nitroglycerin the book was a revelation promising david an escape from the trauma of divorce and life as a teenager he set up a chemical laboratory in his bedroom stocking with beakers flasks bunsen burners and other equipment both purchased and homemade soon the house was plagued with frequent explosions chemical spills and clouds of toxic gas much to his parents growing concern after one incident where a sample of phosphorus exploded in david's face resulting in him being rushed to the emergency room to have shrapnel extracted from his eyes patty and michael banished david's laboratory to the backyard potting shed this suited david just fine as it allowed him to carry out his experiments and greater privacy though david's parents were secretly proud of his industriousness their limited education prevented them from comprehending his experiments and they remained wary and distant to his staunchly blue-collar father david's chemical dabbling's familiar cry for attention and represented a lack of discipline and direction he thus attempted to steer his son towards a more traditional goal achieving the rank of eagle scout but if ken had thought that this would curb david's scientific enthusiasm he was to be proven spectacularly wrong for david managed to find a way to indulge his real passions by pursuing the atomic energy merit badge he contacted government nuclear agencies for information through diagrams explaining nuclear fission and visited a hospital radiology lab to learn about x-rays and nuclear medicine and built a scale model of a nuclear reactor from tin cans and drinking straws but david still wasn't satisfied soon after earning his badge on the 10th of may 1991 he made the fateful decision to try and build a working breeder reactor breeder reactors are designed to produce more nuclear fuel than they consume this is typically done by surrounding the core in a blanket of fertile non-fissile material which is converted to fissile isotopes by absorbing neutrons from the nuclear reaction for example non-vessel uranium-238 can be converted to plutonium-239 and thorium-232 to uranium-233 none of these isotopes were readily available so posing as a high school physics teacher david contacted various private companies and government departments looking for information from donald erd the nuclear regulatory commission's director of isotope production and distribution david learned how certain radioisotopes could be generated by bombarding ordinary elements with neutrons and how to construct a working neutron source the first thing david needed was a source of alpha particles knowing that smoke detectors contained the isotope americium-241 han contacted a fire safety company and convinced them to sell him 100 broken detectors at a dollar each he also attempted to steal smoke detectors from the scout summit camp an act which got him thrown out of camp after cracking open the detectors and extracting the radioactive sources han used a blowtorch to melt them into one large lump this he placed in a hollow block of lead with a small pinhole to let out the alpha particles in front of this hole he placed a piece of aluminium to convert the alpha particles into neutrons and in front of this a block of paraffin wax to convert the neutrons into electrons when the steady crackling of his mail order geiger counter confirmed that the source was working hand set off in search of fertile material to convert into fissile radioisotopes at first he tried to obtain uranium searching the shores of lake michigan with his geiger counter but when this turned up only a trunk full of pitch blend a oily black uranium orb david posing once again as a high school teacher contracted a czech zelbakian firm specializing in university sales and managed to obtain some samples of uranium dioxide he attempted to purify this oxide by mixing it with homemade nitric acid and passing it through a coffee filter but this yielded only unusable black sludge david thus switched to thorium which he knew was found in class gasland mantles after buying as many mantles as he could find in sporting goods stores david used a blowtorch to turn them into ash he then bought a thousand dollars worth of lithium batteries extracted the lithium and wrapped it in thorium ash in tin foil before heating it with a blowtorch this caused the lithium and the thorium to switch places purifying the thorium to a level nine thousand times higher than found in nature david then placed his thorium and uranium in front of his neutron source and waited monitoring the radiation every day with his geiger counter unfortunately neither sample showed any increase in activity so after consulting once again with donald erb at the nrc david set out in search of a stronger alpha particle source radium paint from old luminous clock dials he scoured second-hand stores for old clocks scraping the glowing green paint into pill bottles and then purified the radium using nitric acid before using it to replace the american in his neutron source to further increase the neutron yield at donald herb suggestion he replaced the aluminium with beryllium which a friend of his swiped from the school's chemistry lab this time the neutron source finally yielded results with the activity of the thorium and uranium steadily rising day by day having successfully transmuted elements david was now ready to build his breeder reactor david ann's reactor was as crude as his other creations consisting of small tinfoil wrapped cubes of radium paint american and thorium ash duct taped into an assembly around the size of a shoebox while this device could never have achieved criticality and sustained a chain reaction it did produce a lot of radiation so much in fact that han could detect it all the way down the street having read that real reactors used cobalt control rods to moderate the reaction hand purchased cobalt drill bits and inserted them into his assembly when this had no effect david realized that he had too much radioactive material in the shed and partially disassembled the reactor placing it and much of his other equipment in the trunk of his car unfortunately it was this decision that would lead to his eventual discovery at 2 40 am on august 31 1994 the clinton township police received a tip about a young man stealing tires from a vehicle and arrived to find david han waiting in his car unconvinced by han's explanation that he was just waiting for a friend the officers decided to search the vehicle in the trunk they discovered an assortment of mysterious looking objects including a toolbox sealed with tape 50 tinfoil cubes filled with grey powder and assorted bottles of chemicals fearing that they had found a bomb the officers impounded the vehicle and brought han into the police station questioning david was uncooperative refusing to speak about the contents of his truck or reveal the location of his potting shed laboratory until the police brought in a radiological expert from the department of public health to question him based on han's confession the nuclear regulatory commission and environmental protection agency launched an investigation descending on the ham household to inspect the potting shed what they found shocked them nearly every object in the shed was emitting radiation over a thousand times higher than ordinary background levels little did they know that patty han fearing the radiation would cause her to lose her house had actually thrown most of david's equipment in the trash following their inspection the epa declared the shed a super fund clean up side on june 26 1995 nearly a year after david hann's arrest epa officials descended on the ham residence dismantling the potting shed and packing it and the soil beneath it into 39 barrels which were transported to a low-level nuclear waste facility in utah the cleanup took three days and cost sixty thousand dollars the epa encouraged david to be evaluated for radioactivity at the nearby enrico fermi nuclear power plant but he refused apparently frightened by what he might discover following the cleanup david han fell into a deep depression not only had several years of work and his life's purpose been destroyed but his classmates had begun to tease him calling him radioactive boy his scout leaders even attempted to revoke his eagle scout status for endangering the community worse still his parents had grown weary of his lack of direction and demanded that he enroll in college david majored in durology at malcolm community college but skipped many of his classes forcing his parents to issue an ultimatum join the military or get out david chose the navy and after completing boot camp was stationed aboard the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier uss enterprise unfortunately for david's nuclear ambitions as a regular seaman his shipboard duties were purely menial and he was never allowed anywhere near the carrier's eight reactors however he remained optimistic stating to journalist ken silverstein in 1998 i wanted to make a scratch in life i've still got time i don't believe i took more than five years off my life but while he might have been right the years ahead were likely not what he imagined after a four-year tour in the navy david joined the marines reaching the rank of lance corporal before being honorably discharged on medical grounds after this he fell into a spiral of depression alcoholism and drug abuse and soon returned two old habits in april 2007 the fbi received a tip that david han was in possession of another neutron source while they determined that he was not an imminent terrorist threat they did perform a personal interview during which david's deteriorated mental state became frighteningly apparent while in the navy david had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia but was not taking his prescribed medication he was abusing cocaine heavily and had become paranoid of people that he claimed had the ability to shock his genitals with his mind he had also gone back to collecting radium and america in an attempt to build another reactor in august of that year david was arrested and charged with larceny after trying to steal smoke detectors from his apartment building he pled guilty and served 90 days in prison then fell once again into obscurity then on the 27th of december 2016 david hann was found dead in his apartment the victim of an accidental overdose of alcohol of fentanyl he was 39. the story of david han is a tragedy of missed opportunity though not a good student in the conventional sense he was nonetheless extremely bright and highly resourceful and lacked only the proper guidance to turn his scientific interests into a successful career at the age of only 17 david hann had purified radioisotopes and built a working neutron source with the right mentorship and direction who knows what else he might have accomplished so i really hope you enjoyed this video thanks again to sheath underwear for sponsoring there's a link to them below and as always thank you for watching

Channel: Today I Found Out

Views: 394,301

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Id: qav8Ma63I0E

Length: 12min 31sec (751 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 28 2021