Boy Scout builds nuclear reactor in backyard and exposes 40,000 locals to radiation

The Breeder Reactor

This is how it happened: David Hahn built a nuclear reactor in his mother’s backyard shed. He made a reactor core from the radioactive radium and americium he had collected from the clocks and smoke detectors and wrapped it with foil-wrapped blocks of thorium with some uranium powder.

David added blocks of carbon to this and wrapped it all up with duct tape. The homemade nuclear reactor turned out to be functional, much to David’s delight. He had managed to build a nuclear reactor in his lab. Now he had to get that Atomic Energy badge.

The reactor was working. But a little too well…