Comment by mmmBacon
8 years ago
Reminds me of David Hahn, a kid who tried to make a breeder reactor in a garden shed. He massed Americium from smoke detectors in an attempt to make Plutonium.
8 years ago
Reminds me of David Hahn, a kid who tried to make a breeder reactor in a garden shed. He massed Americium from smoke detectors in an attempt to make Plutonium.
Yeah, crazy stuff. Shows what's possible if you have no boundaries. He collected old glow in the dark paint and extracted the radium from it then used beryllium foil to make a neutron source that he used to irradiate thorium from kerosene lamps, producing U-233. Very tiny amounts, but remarkable nonetheless.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn#Death
I was unaware that he died. :\ He's sort of a local legedend here in SE Michigan. I wish I'd known about his funeral, the funeral home is a few hundred feet from my house.
Probably important to highlight that he was 39 when he died...
I always admired his passion, but puzzled at his stubborn lack of safety precautions.
If I recall, the cause of death was "unatural" and years of mental health problems hint that he didn't die of radiation related diseases.
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Probably a good lesson for us all: anything can be learned on your own, but learning on your own is not guaranteed to highlight what you don't know and need to.