David Hahn, the 'radioactive boy scout' who tried to build a nuclear reactor (2022) | Hacker News Reader

David Hahn, the 'radioactive boy scout' who tried to build a nuclear reactor (2022)

allthatsinteresting.com

116 pointsgeox61 comments

Wow. I remember reading about this years and years ago and thinking this kid would have such a bright future.

Now I’m an old man and looking at this story my thoughts are more “this kid could never have had a chance in these school systems”. Strange to observe my own change in perspective too.

The guy's fate is a failure on our society's part.

Imagine if some professor of nuclear engineering had pulled him aside and said, "Kid, listen, if you're going to do this, we need to have you do it safely and correctly. Let's have you assist at my lab."

He didn’t do it because of some rational decisions which could be moderated by basic guidance.

There’s probably 10’s of thousands of kids who realized they could do something similar, but also realized it was a bad idea for any number of reasons. He came to a different conclusion.

Some kids need more than basic guidance, especially when about to contaminate a neighborhood.

Yep, any kid who obsesses about the periodic table of elements can figure out how to collect radioactive isotopes and attempt to build a simple nuclear reactor. Most don't, because they know better.

The story was sensationalized for profit. It's really the story of a mentally ill individual who obsessively collected radioactive material from smoke alarms and other sources. It was not really all that dangerous. None of the stuff he tried to build had any chance of working. In the end, he died of a drug overdose. It's a sad story of mental illness, that's it.

I remember reading an MIT admissions article mentioning him: “A few years ago, we did not admit a student who had created a fully-functional nuclear reactor in his garage.”

https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/applying_sideways/

That article made me a bit sad. MIT might have made the right call, but I expected some reflection on why MIT rejected him, and the essay is just trite "Oh you just have to be good at academics, don't worry, there's nothing specific we require for admission, which means you can totally do it!"

Academics i.e. (in my experience) be skilled at rote memorization and where there is a pretense of critical thinking, discovering your teachers' opinions and pandering to them.

It definitely was not a fully functional nuclear reactor. It was a functional neutron source.

More likely a functional radon source. With all the torched thorium mantles and radium dials, he was definitely getting plenty of that (and the subsequent daughter products). The quantity of neutrons would have been extremely low, certainly less than what you’d need to get any appreciable activation products, let alone breeding.

That article reads as extremely smug and glib.

It would be more palatable if it said something along the lines of "MIT is a great school, but there are plenty of great schools and if you honestly do your best then you'll probably succeed at one of them." Instead it never questions whether MIT is worth the hype or whether admittance is a crapshoot. And the line about "we rejected someone who built a frikin nuclear reactor" is extremely pretentious and self serving.

I applied to MIT for undergrad and I didn't get in, and I'm fine with that because there are plenty of other great schools.

All through my career I’ve been consistently disappointed in the MIT grads I’ve hired or work with.

I used to think it was the best fucking place or some shit, but it seems most of the grads are worthless shitbags who coast on the brand

I wouldn't go that far, but in most cases they have never stood out as extraordinary in my experience. That isn't to say that many aren't extraordinary, but I imagine those who are end up in academia or something.

For what it's worth I've worked with several and they were great.

I don't have a problem with their ability. But most of them won't shut up about MIT. But who can blame them? MIT has waaaay better marketing then any of its competitors. Of course it's students will have bought into their own propaganda.

Let me decode that for you:

"Our lawyers and PR department advised us to reject the guy who created a superfund site because when he does it again it will be prefixed by 'MIT Educated...'"

In Europe they make tests and those who score best are admitted. The dean has a small list (10 out of 1000?) that they can admit freely.

But I guess if scoring was objective, then mostly Asian and Jewish people would be admitted?

So the system is rigged?

Some European test systems were rigged as well. https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556

Follow the money.

The boutique US universities are private institutions sitting on unbelievably large endowments. They're strange hybrids between school, hedge fund and country club.

Admission is a committee driven process to decide who can join the very exclusive club.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_univers...

I wonder if they select against people who are too likely to spend their lives tinkering in their garages to have any chance of making a several million dollar alumni donation.

I applied to MIT in 2005, having built a functional Farnsworth fusor in my garage (which was fairly uncommon at the time), and was not admitted. Part of me wonders if the guy in the article was referring to my case, since the David Hahn story was very well known even in 2003 when I was getting started with my work.

Either way, MIT is being overly smug about it with articles like this. The admissions director at the time even brought it up in an interview with the associated press that fall [1]. Things turned out fine for me, and I’m glad that whole undergraduate admissions rat race is in the past.

1. https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/marilee_jones_in_the_n...

I guess you could call it smug, but it is also communicating the truth, that universities have decided the top 5-10% of non-legacy applicants are equally good. Most metrics stop working near the limits of their dynamic range, so they could be right, but I don't really know one way or the other.

It's more smug when you read this article from the perspective of a recently-rejected 18 year old, knowing that you're the person the article is referring to. :)

In all seriousness, the MIT admissions reps I interacted with at the time were responsive, friendly, and more transparent with me about the process than you'd expect. I actually did ask them for feedback once the cycle was over, and it basically came down to the concern that I would be too focused on doing "cool stuff" and not enough on core academics, which was probably evidenced by my HS transcript. I was a solid A- student, but you could tell my priorities were extracurricular.

Hindsight being 20/20 two decades on, they weren't far off the mark on that feedback, but it never wound up being a problem.

That's funny because the advice everyone gave me was that research was more important than academics for getting into a really good graduate program.

Exactly, so I can only speculate at this point on the motivations. I suspect undergrad admissions committees are incentivized to maximize the first year retention rate, so they are overly conservative when it comes to selecting for people who they think won’t flunk out the first year.

You might should have considered Nuclear Engineering department at University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, which is ranked No. 1 in the US (in contrary, MIT's nuclear engineering department is ranked No. 2). It's a better program and you might learn more things than what you could do at MIT.

I did study nuclear engineering, both bachelors and PhD, and in hindsight, the path I took is one I’d gladly take again. That said, everything I did in undergrad was eventually overshadowed by my graduate studies and early career experiences anyway, and I’d have likely wound up in the same general place regardless.

The stress we put ourselves through in high school when applying to colleges was not worth it, and I can’t it being any better these days. As trite as the advice from my elders seemed at the time, your choice of undergrad is not necessary a limitation if you’re determined enough to get to a particular career destination.

Great to meet another NERS student here on HN!

That post reproduced the entire AP piece. Surely that's illegal...?

Perhaps they licensed it. AP lets you do that pretty easily. Literally the whole point of AP - sell news articles for reprinting. Or perhaps they committed some copyright infringement 15 years ago.

That article is the purest example of how college has become about signaling and not substance.

someone does something commendable in STEM

MIT: “We didn’t let them in, which means it’s bad since we are the arbiters of what is good and bad”

He never created a "fully functional" reactor. Be did get a lot further than you would expect a teenager to make it!

From the article above, it doesn't sound like Hahn managed to build a reactor, only a mildly radioactive source. If I understand correctly, you need to be able to start and control fusion (i.e. a nuclear reaction) to say you have a "reactor". I don't think the MIT article is talking about him. Our own fastneutron, from the sibling comment is more likely to be the student.

Related. Others?

The Radioactive Boy Scout (1998) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31318248 - May 2022 (54 comments)

The Radioactive Boy Scout (1998) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23538908 - June 2020 (1 comment)

The Radioactive Boy Scout (1999) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15466860 - Oct 2017 (34 comments)

“Radioactive Boy Scout” who tried to build a homemade nuclear reactor dead at 39 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12957768 - Nov 2016 (67 comments)

Radioactive Boyscout (David Hahn: Oct 30, 1976 – Sep 27, 2016) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12951194 - Nov 2016 (2 comments)

The Radioactive Boy Scout: When a teenager attempts to build a breeder reactor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9867739 - July 2015 (5 comments)

The Radioactive Boy Scout (1998) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6310748 - Sept 2013 (1 comment)

The radioactive boy scout: the teenager who attempted to build a breeder reactor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=611583 - May 2009 (18 comments)

I'll also add this video documentary about him which is awesome https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0QMeTjcJDA

Unfortunately, it's sensationalized dishonesty. Just a mentally ill person who collected mildly radioactive material and had no chance of ever building anything that worked.

Interesting article about the day he died at age 39...

https://thenewstack.io/memories-life-radioactive-boy-scout/

His death was ruled an accidental overdose from ethanol, fentanyl, and diphenhydramine.

He was told he had reduced his life expectancy, but refused to get testing that would give him the details.

Amongst a host of other problems, did he maybe have reason to suspect cancer or some other generative disease - hence the drug use?

Whats the point in speculating on some ultimate cause? Maybe he liked getting fucked up? Some people prefer the lotus.

Hahn deserves a Darwin Award for knowingly mishandling radioactive materials. He also put many neighbors at risk and probably shortened their lives. Dolt, not hero.

I've seen similar stories of people collecting radioactive materials and putting people nearby at serious risk.

At some level I can admire the drive to do something like this scientifically, if you're that deep into the weeds then it should be obvious how dangerous it is to you and other people. Don't put other people at risk for your science experiments.

Most of the radioactive materials pose little threat, especially at the sizes that don't require a license and in the containers those samples are typically sold in. The only ones that really pose a danger to others is when you have people exceeding the size limit. Most of those people really aren't very knowledgeable, even if they are "deep in the weeds" (Hahn was learning as he went).

In the case of a Swede who tried to do it, he had multiple psychological diagnoses such as autism and mostly saw it as a fun experiment. People online encouraged him which played a part. I reckon they often value the risk differently. In his case, he even called and asked if his actions were legal, which resulted in the police arresting him.

I wrote an essay for my college chemistry class on him, back in like 2010. Sad to read that he passed away.

> The medical examiner's report indicated a blood alcohol concentration of 0.404 mg/dL.

Wow, that's a tremendously high BAC. Also had the reaper of death Fentanyl in his system.

I feel like there should be a permanent YC page for David. He certainly comes up enough.

That’s funny, I’ve been reading HN since the beginning and have never heard of this.

I have a friend who claimed to have done the similar thing. He also got cancer. But he might not have advanced too far besides that. Do you think it's plausible? I only hear about David Hahn, but there ought to be more? Or not?

The excellent YouTuber "Plainly Difficult" covered this story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCwWX_9grrE

Cruising across town sporting a Geiger counter on the dashboard, now that’s a real crossover between cool and nerd.

It’s a pity that a genius like him didn’t make it to the MIT and ended up arrested

I remember when he got arrested the second time... The shots of him looked awful. There were radiation burns all over his face. What a depressing end for this guy.

His story is so sad and how it all shook out. I'm surprised he didn't get into the nuke program in the Navy. Definitely a shame no one took him under his wing.

[edit: delete]

Is there any evidence he was a "great engineer?" All he managed to do was collect a lot of radioactive material.

Yeah seems like someone very reckless. Not surprised schools and other institutions said “no thanks“.

What he did was more than you give him credit for.

I agree he wasn't a great engineer. A big part if engineering is doing it in a way in which is safe for everyone involved, the community. He was unbelievable irresponsible in that arena.

Wow, the linked story about Hisashi Ouchi is even more disturbing.

The Dollop had an episode that was amusing

Omnibus listener?

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