Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

In the summer of 1995, the EPA decommissioned a nuclear site near Detroit, Michigan—the strange thing is that it was a backyard potting shed.

An immensely ambitious 17-year-old, David Hahn, was building a homemade nuclear breeder reactor before local authorities discovered his work.

Over several years, Hahn developed the materials and technical know-how through subterfuge and dogged determination.

On June 26, 1995, residents of the quiet, unassuming subdivision of Golf Manor—located in Clinton Township 25 miles outside of Detroit—bore witness to a strange and otherworldly display. Eleven men whom journalist Ken Silverstein later described in Harper’s Magazine as “moon-suited” began a three-day-long, $60,000 process of dismantling a potting shed, the remnants of which (along with everything inside) would be relocated to a dumping facility in the middle of the Great Salt Lake Desert.

This scene marked the end of a years-long effort by 17-year-old David Hahn to build a backyard nuclear reactor. Although the reactor (technically a nuclear breeder reactor, a design that produces more fissionable material that it consumes) never materialized, Hahn’s dogged determination required an impressive amount of guile, ingenuity, and technical know-how—but it started with a passionate zeal for all things chemistry.

As Silverstein wrote in his 1998 article, which fully recounted this fascinating story for the first time, Hahn wasn’t like other high-schoolers. After getting his hands on The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments at the age of 10, he delved deep into a world of chemical reactions and periodic tables. While his classmates were conducting run-of-the-mill gunpowder experiments in school, Hahn had already developed his own nitroglycerin, a principal ingredient in most forms of dynamite. In an attempt to earn the coveted “Eagle” status with the Boy Scouts, he earned a merit badge for “atomic energy” in 1991 with a drawing depicting how nuclear fission worked.

However, nobody knew at the time that he’d eventually try his hand at the real thing.

What followed was a years-long scheme to collect all the hard-to-obtain radioisotopes needed for his backyard experiment. Hahn wrote a series of letters to nuclear-related organizations and institutions, including the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), posing as “Professor Hahn” to ascertain the best ways to acquire radium, uranium, americium, and thorium. First, he devised a “neutron gun” using a block of lead and Americium-241, which decays in alpha rays of protons and neutrons. With a piece of aluminum, Hahn could absorb those rays but discard the neutrons. Now the irradiating could begin.

In the following months, Hahn purified thorium 170 times higher than what the NRC requires for licensing, transformed thorium-232 into fissionable uranium-233, and eventually concentrated radium to improve his neutron gun. Finally, when he turned 17, Hahn began construction of his reactor, removing these radioactive elements from their lead casing while tracking levels with his Geiger counter.

“It was radioactive as heck,” Hahn told Silverstein years later. “The level of radiation after a few weeks was far greater than it was at the time of assembly.” Using that same Geiger counter, Hahn began detecting radiation five houses away from his own and decided that he needed to dismantle this mad science experiment, stowing away his equipment in a padlocked toolbox in the trunk of a Pontiac 6000.

His fissile work was only discovered by accident when a random tip about a young man stealing tires in the area caught Hahn in its crosshairs. When cops searched the car, they found the toolbox, and Hahn warned them that the contents were radioactive. The Michigan State Police Bomb Squad, along with the State Department of Public Health, eventually discovered high levels of thorium, triggering a national response.

Further investigations of the backyard shed found similarly unsafe levels of radiation, and after developing an action plan for decommissioning and detoxifying the site, Superfund clean-up crews arrived on a summer day in June to cart away Hahn’s impressive nuclear work.

Despite the end result, Hahn certainly earned that atomic energy merit badge.

You Might Also Like

20 Cars That Were Massively Improved by a Redesign

Going on Vacation? These Appliances Need to Be Unplugged Before You Leave the House

Roborock Reigns Supreme for Robot Vacuums, but We Also Loved These Other Models