The radioactive boy scout :
Material type: TextPublication details: New York : Villard, 2005. c2004Edition: Villard Books trade pbk. edDescription: xviii, 209 pages ; 19 cmContent type: text Media type: unmediated Carrier type: volumeISBN: 0812966600; 9780812966602Subject(s): Hahn, David, 1976- | Hahn, David, 1976- | Boy Scouts of America | Boy Scouts of America | Gifted boys -- United States -- Biography | Problem youth -- United States -- Biography | Breeder reactors | Breeder reactors | Gifted boys | Problem youth | United StatesGenre/Form: Biography. DDC classification: 621.483 .S587 LOC classification: TK9014.H34 | S54 2005Item type | Current library | Call number | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds |
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Books | Main Library Non-Fiction - General Stacks | 621.483 .S587 2005 | Available | 17188 |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 207-209).
Prologue: men in white: the nuclear age comes to Golf Manor -- Roots: the making of a teenage scientist -- From the radium craze to the soaring sixties: science conquers all -- Burning down the house: basement explosions and other early developments -- Radioactive education: lessons from the boy scouts -- Stalking the periodic table: elements, my dear Watson -- How nuclear enthusiasts planned to solve the energy crisis: a brief history of the breeder reactor -- From theory to practice: how the potting shed came to glow -- Busted: the collapse of David's dream -- Epilogue: postnuclear syndrome: David's radioactive exile.
Growing up in suburban Detroit, David Hahn was fascinated by science, and his basement experiments were far more ambitious than those of other boys. While working on his Atomic Energy merit badge for the Boy Scouts, David's obsessive attention turned to nuclear energy. Throwing caution to the wind, he plunged into a new project: building a model nuclear breeder reactor in his backyard garden shed. Ken Silverstein re-creates in brilliant detail the months of David's improbable nuclear quest. His unsanctioned and wholly unsupervised project finally sparked an environmental catastrophe that put his town's forty thousand residents at risk and caused the EPA to shut down his lab and bury it at a radioactive dumpsite in Utah.
1300 Lexile.