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This Ambitious Teen Built a Nuclear Reactor in His Mother’s Backyard
But they sent him to prison for his enthusiasms
At 2:40 am on August 31st, 1994, the authorities received an emergency alert about a car tire theft. Upon arrival, the cops were about to experience a very rare incident. A teenage boy named David Hahn was loading his nuclear reactor into his car. The cops searched his vehicle thinking they would find a bomb. Instead, they found an unusual and dangerous nuclear reactor. It astonishingly measured 1000 times the average background radiation.
This is the story of an intelligent child whose ambitions went wrong. But, what kind of background did Hahn grow up in? What triggered a young boy to create such a remarkable yet dangerous invention?
Early life
David Charles Hahn was born on October 30th, in Royal Oak, Michigan. He lived to become the first boy to build a nuclear reactor from scratch. What’s fascinating is that, in his construction, Hahn used common household equipment.
Hahn’s parents divorced when he was still a child. Hence, he found himself switching between his stepmother and biological mother’s house. At the age of ten, Hahn received a gift from his grandfather, The Golden Book Of Chemistry Experiments. His obsession with science started taking root from reading this chemistry experiment book.
Hahn immediately set up a small laboratory in his bedroom. To show how serious he was, he bought real chemistry equipment. Also, he spiced up his laboratory with more chemistry books and encyclopedias. His passion was so intense to the extent that he took part-time jobs to finance his experiments.
By the age of fourteen, Hahn had managed to make natural glycerine in his laboratory. Sometimes, he performed experiments on himself. Yet, his guardians never paid attention to what was happening. His father ordered Hahn to move his laboratory to the basement. This was only after he caused a series of explosions in his bedroom.
Hahn succumbed to severe injuries on his hands and in his eyes in one of his experimental explosions. He hammered a massive mixture of red phosphorus with match heads. After the incident, he moved his laboratory to his biological…
