The Strange Story of the Atomic BoyScout

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David was a precocious kid growing up, curious about anything and everything around him. When David turned 10, his Dad gave him a book on Chemistry. He read the book over and over again…studied…experimented. Perhaps “The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments” wasn’t the best thing for his Dad to give.

By the age of 12 he had mastered his father’s University-level chemistry books, and by 14, he had made some nitro-glycerine. Worried about his son’s obsession with chemistry, his father thought that David needed some different interests in his life.

So he introduced him to Scouting, showing him how he could complete different tasks, get medals and badges for achievements, maybe even make it to be a Eagle Scout. All he needed was to go through the list of required and elective subjects to reach that goal. One of the elective subjects that he selected was the Merit Badge in Atomic Energy.

This badge requires you to know the history of Atomic Energy, who some of the important people involved were, know the process of  atomic fission. He quickly learned the required material, even built a model of nuclear reactor with some items around the house like plastic straws and cans. This earned his Merit Badge in Atomic Energy when he was 14.

But like chemistry before, he became a little obsessed with the subject and decided to pursue it further.

So the first thing that David decided is that he needs to make a neutron gun.

Atoms have a core of positively-charged protons, and neutral neutrons. Some of the bigger atoms (like uranium, for example) have unstable cores. If a neutron hits this core, it splits into two smaller atoms and a neutron or two – and also gives off a huge amount of energy.

He researched it further, pretended to be a Physics Lecturer and called American Nuclear Society and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. From that, he discovered that he could get radioactive Americium-241 from household smoke detectors. He bought 100 broken ones at a dollar each from a motel that was remodeling. He then contacted the smoke detector manufacturer and the customer-services representative told him exactly where the Americium-241 was, and how to remove it from its inert gold matrix.

Tearing apart the 100 smoke detectors, he put his tiny pile of Americium-241 inside a hollow lead block, and drilled a small hole in it.  As Americium decays, it gives off alpha particles. When alpha particles hit aluminum, the aluminum gives off neutrons. Putting a strip of aluminum foil in front of the hole in the lead block where the a-particles came out, and bingo – he had a neutron gun.

He had also discovered information about the cloth mantles in gas lanterns. They are covered with thorium-232 (because thorium is very resistant to high temperatures). He also knew that if you hit thorium-232 with enough neutrons, the thorium-232 would turn into uranium-233.  So he bought thousands of gas mantles and turned them into thorium ash with a very hot gas flame.

How did he purify the thorium? Simple enough..use lithium batteries. So he got a large quantity of lithium batteries, cut them open, and did some simple chemistry to concentrate the thorium.

But alas, the effort was wasted. His neutron gun didn’t have enough neutrons to turn thorium-232 into uranium-233.

Not to be easily discouraged, he came up with another plan. Radium delivers large amounts of alpha particles, and he had been told if you blast these alpha particles onto beryllium, you get enormous numbers of neutrons.

But where do you get some radium?

Well, until the late 1960s, the glow-in-the-dark faces of wristwatches, clocks, and car dashboards glowed because they were painted with radium.  Hitting all the flea markets, garage sales, and junk shops, slowly gathering little bits and pieces, chipping and scrapping off the glowing radium.

One day, he got lucky when he bought the clock for $20, and found inside a complete vial of radium paint conveniently left behind.

He rigged up a more powerful neutron gun with a hollow lead block with a hole, his collected radium, and some beryllium to get hit by the a-particles and give off neutrons. What did he use for a target? Some uranium ore he got from a friendly supplier. But failure again. The neutrons were too energetic and just zipped through the uranium.

He corrected this by having it be moderated (slowed) by running them through tritium (which he painstakingly scraped off modern glow-in-the-dark gun and bow sights) – and the uranium ore got more radioactive.

At last, he was reaching the conclusion of his quest. He mixed his radium with his americium and aluminum, wrapped it in aluminum foil, and then wrapped the whole mess in his thorium and uranium – of course, all held together with duct tape.

Finally some success!

But his Geiger counter was showing that the bizarre assembly was getting more radioactive by the hour. Perhaps, just perhaps…he thought.. was I having too much success? He discovered that he could pick up the radioactivity outside the shed, then 5 houses away. Panicking, he threw the creation in a toolbox to carry off for dismantling.

But on the 31st of August, 1994, the neighbors by coincidence had called the local police because a young man was seen doing something suspicious. When the police arrived, all David told them was to be especially careful of the strange looking thing in his toolbox.

Why? they asked. “Because it was radioactive!” he replied.

After some hastened phone calls, the Nuclear Emergency Response Team was called to investigate. Overcoming their complete disbelief and shock that a Boy Scout had created a runaway nuclear reaction in a backyard shed, they evacuated the area.

Declaring the backyard as a emergency superfund cleanup site, a large team of men in ventilated white moon suits proceeded to chop up his radioactive shed with chainsaws, stuffing the parts into thirty nine 200-litre sealed drums which they took away to a nuclear waste repository.

The clean-up cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, requiring evacuation of a large surrounding area, and removal of the shed and surrounding top soil.

But it did protect the 40,000 nearby inhabitants from that unsightliness of glowing in the dark.

NO! David NO!

Nuclear Response Cleanup
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13 years ago

From boyscout to a dirty bomb making terrorist. I knew boyscouts are no good. This post has inspired me to write one of my own when I was really in Boyscouts and got kicked out.

Reply to  The Lawyer
13 years ago

It didn’t have anything to do with the game “Underwear, Underwear, where’s my underwear?” did it?

Reply to  Krell
13 years ago

Seriously my dad’s scout leader did play a game like that. I can see how the rumors begin.

13 years ago

I might mention to our most excellent readers here at Mad Mikes that to attempt to do what the Boy Scout did in this post is pure stupidity for several reasons.

Even if you succeed, you will not see any visible effects. It will not glow, shoot beams across the room, explode or cause time travel. Unless you have a Geiger counter, you will not know that anything has happened.

But what you will do is shorten your life by several years by radiation poisoning. He had spent several months and lots of money to do what he did and just got a clicking counter and lots of trouble.

Here is a picture of him at the age of 31. Notice the beta radiation burns on his face. Nothing to play around with.

comment image

13 years ago

Dear lord, someone on Youtube has made an instructional (how to step by step) video of how David went about building the reactor, with the caveat “Don’t try this at home” which somehow I think is not going to be much in the way of discouragement. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2FpeM3ejjw

Reply to  Mother Hen
13 years ago

You know what is even stranger? Duran Duran wrote a song about it called “Playing with Uranium”

Reply to  Krell
13 years ago

I was in the Boys Scouts, until they asked me to leave, well they taught me how to light fires. There were no world destroying classes back in those days. Just as well.

13 years ago

I started reading this post and thought- FINALLY Krell is going to wax nostalgic about his own childhood. But then I realized since he had children that didn’t glow, it couldn’t be the same David.

He did do some innovative and ingenious things though, but none as dangerous as that.

Admin
13 years ago

What a magnificent post. Now I understand 🙂

Krell
Reply to  Professor Mike
13 years ago

Understand? Now Mike, don’t be starting up something in the shed. Glowing German Sheperds are quite frightening 🙂

Reply to  Krell
13 years ago

LOL!!! Ok! You got me 🙂

Demeur
13 years ago

This is definitely one for my haz mat recert class. Hadn’t heard it before this and I hear a lot. I’m amazed he could still find all the components.

13 years ago

We have this book in our library. Very interesting and frightening too.

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