David Hahn was a Michigan teenager and Boy Scout who tried to build a breeder reactor in a shed at his mother’s home. He did not build a working reactor. According to Ken Silverstein’s 1998 Harper’s Magazine account, he obtained radioactive materials and built a neutron gun, and the shed was later dismantled in an Environmental Protection Agency cleanup. The nickname comes from that combination: a Boy Scout’s chemistry-and-nuclear hobby that turned into a radioactive backyard project.
Who David Hahn was
Hahn was a Boy Scout with an interest in chemistry and nuclear energy. His shed project was tied to the Atomic Energy merit badge. The reporting describes that link, but it does not present the project as an official Scouting activity or an endorsed one, and the Boy Scouts were not part of the cleanup or the public response.
- Location: a shed at his mother’s home in Michigan.
- Interest: chemistry and nuclear energy, pursued through a Scouting project.
- Ambition: a breeder reactor, a type of reactor designed to produce more fissile material than it consumes.
- Outcome: a neutron gun and radioactive material that prompted a government response.
What he was trying to build, and what he actually made
The most common error in summaries of this story is the claim that Hahn built a nuclear reactor. The sources separate his goal from his result, and the distinction matters for any accurate answer to the question.
| Question | What the sources support | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Did he aim to build a reactor? | Yes. His ambition was a breeder reactor. | Silverstein, Harper’s Magazine, November 1998 |
| Did he build a working reactor? | No. A 1999 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists retrospective states he never built anything resembling a working reactor. | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists retrospective, 1999 |
| What device does the reporting describe? | A neutron gun. | Silverstein, Harper’s Magazine, November 1998 |
| Where did the radioactive material come from? | He obtained radioactive materials. How he sourced them is not stated in the sources used for this article. | Silverstein, Harper’s Magazine, November 1998 |
Later summaries often compress this into “he built a nuclear reactor.” That phrasing overstates the outcome, and it should be avoided.
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The shed and the cleanup
The cleanup itself is documented. In congressional testimony, Representative Edward Markey described EPA personnel dismantling the shed on June 26, 1995.
Silverstein’s reporting describes what officials found when they surveyed the shed. He writes of “excessive levels” of radioactive material, specifically americium-241 and thorium-232. He also recounts a reading of 50,000 counts per minute from a can found in the shed, compared with background levels. These figures come from Silverstein’s account of official findings. They are not drawn from an EPA technical report consulted directly for this article, so readers who need exact measurements should treat them as reported figures rather than as verified agency data.
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The 40,000 figure
Markey told a House Committee on Energy and Commerce hearing on March 3, 2004 that the EPA later estimated Hahn’s effort had placed 40,000 people at risk of radiation exposure. That is an attributed risk estimate, given in testimony. It does not establish that 40,000 people were exposed, and it does not establish that anyone was harmed. Any use of the number should keep that distinction explicit.
Where the nickname comes from
“The Radioactive Boy Scout” was the headline of Silverstein’s November 1998 article in Harper’s Magazine. “Nuclear Boy Scout” is a closely related shorthand for the same story. Both are popular labels rather than official titles. They describe the pairing of a Scout’s identity with a radioactive experiment, and they should not be read as a formal designation from the Boy Scouts or any government body.
Further reading
Silverstein later expanded the story into a book, The Radioactive Boy Scout: The True Story of a Boy and His Backyard Nuclear Reactor. A Google Books catalog record lists it as a 240-page Random House Publishing Group title published March 2, 2004. Its subtitle uses the word “reactor,” which follows the popular framing; the technical record discussed above is the more precise guide to what Hahn actually built.
For the original long-form reporting, read Ken Silverstein’s “The Radioactive Boy Scout,” Harper’s Magazine, November 1998.
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