How to Build a Nuclear Reactor in Your Backyard

And the tragic story of one American boy

Summer of 1994. The potting shed of an otherwise unassuming house gives off the vivid, infamous glow of radiation. Of the area’s 40,000 residents only one woman notices the unnerving wash of light coming from the shed. A foggy glow set against the dark Michigan night. But that woman doesn’t know what’s causing the glow, nor does she suspect that the radiation levels are starting to get so out of control that a Geiger counter has begun detecting higher and higher levels of radiation farther and farther from the house. The radiation is strong enough to seep through concrete. What was meant to be a sustained nuclear reaction is getting out of control, and it will soon mean the involvement of government officials and the establishment of a new “Superfund” site — an area claimed by the Environmental Protection Agency to be among the nation’s most contaminated land.

Shown above is the BN-800 breeder reactor in Russia.

The story really begins when David Hahn, the boy responsible for the nuclear contamination, receives his first chemistry book at the age of ten. The book outlines how to set up a laboratory and conduct simple experiments, allowing David to make harmless substances like alcohol. In this way chemistry truly becomes an art. Just as some children use painting or dance as a means of coping with their problems, so too did chemistry become a way for David to escape his life.

Throughout the years this romance with chemistry continues, growing more intricate as time goes by. At age 12 David has gone on to read college textbooks. At the age of 14 he’s surrounded himself with beakers of various shapes and sizes, some housing substances as explosive as nitroglycerin. In fact an explosion does take place. It happens when David is working with red phosphorus, a chemical that’s controlled by the DEA because it can be used for the manufacture of illegal drugs. This red phosphorus can be found on the striking surface of matchboxes.

But the real turning point comes when David gets one ambitious new goal: to build a nuclear reactor in his backyard.

David stands outside his shed where a number of different experiments are underway at the same time.