Nuclear Engineer Reacts to Weird History "Radioactive Boy Scout - How David Hahn Built a Reactor"
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- čas přidán 29. 06. 2024
- Original Video @WeirdHistory • Radioactive Boy Scout ...
Nuclear Engineer Reacts to Weird History "Radioactive Boy Scout - How David Zahn Built a Reactor" - Věda a technologie
Wow...despite having divorced parents, he still manages to have a Nuclear Family
underrated comment.
🥁bum-bum, tsk!
Comment win.
They were a glowing example.
I wonder if his mum was an atomic blonde ? :3 ( I'll show myself out :D )
If only he was given the proper guidance, he could've been one of the brightest minds of this time.
If only his mom read to him the story of Icarus when he was a little kid
It's a shame. If only he had a mentor who was able to watch over and teach him how to do his experiments safely(also, presumably, not in his backyard.)
Yeah. However, if he approached someone he would most likely be just told "don't do it" and I am not talking about his reactor. The problem with telling someone "don't do it" is that if he does not listen and stil wants to do it, he is not any safer and he may even decide to avoid talking about it with others (who may hae given him useful advice).
For example, apparently there is a trend of people burning cool-looking figures in wood using a microwave oven transformer (really dangerous) and praying the wood with salt water (as if the 2kV was not dangerous enough). You can tell someone to not do it, but you know he might still do it. So, I liked the approach one CZcamsr took in that, after explaining how dangerous this is and citing instances where people got seriously injured or killed, he said "I'm not going to tell you not to do it because you will not listen to me, instead, if you are going to do it anyway, do this this and this to be at least a bit safer".
@@Pentium100MHzso garbage retoric about how to screw him some one of his age by telling him to no do it any way?? i don’t get it what this shity argument is about
Honestly if he just had the guidance and resources of today.. he would of been pretty big in the industry.
"Why didn't his parents stop him?"... are you kidding? That's peak Gen X childhood right there.
Damn right. I never got into the nuclear experiments but definitely had the unobserved "lab" in the basement.
Looking back I feel bad for whoever bought the house when we moved 🤣
@@MadScientist267 Same. They had stopped putting uranium in chemistry sets by then, and mostly made it so you couldn't make a bomb out of what was in there, but combining the stuff that was in the set with stuff you could find under the kitchen sink, you could make yourself some pretty damn dangerous substances.
Generation X Education of physics and chemistry.
Right I grew up in that time 7 of 8 I was ignored most of the time they only noticed when things went wrong luckily I was just depressed and not building a neutron source.
100%, my basement was my "blow up Lego houses and photograph with a 110 film camera" experimentation lab. Parents never had a clue since this was the 80s and they both worked 😂😂
I'm a firm believer that you can do stupid sh*t, as long as you do stupid sh*t safely. Given the opportunity I would also hammer a bag full of red phosphorus, but I'd do it with leather gloves, a burn apron and safety glasses.
TLDR: always use protection.
Great advice even for some less scientific endeavors
I mean I always look back to the research teams that were making records in the 60s that are still putting modern systems to shame. Maybe not in scale but definitely in ability. Stuff like the MSRE were deceptively simple and built on pen, paper and pure brain matter. And yet the 3 core elements air cooled tin pot of a machine essentially accomplished the passively safe, self regulating system modern reactors are still trying to achieve while also enabling the usage of basically any fuel and, if the chemistry of the fluorination collumb was developed, continuous breeding and re-fueling of the core. And they did all of that safely, despite being in all appearance more gun ho than it had any right being.
The nuclear industry unfortunately folded on itself due to safety concerns. The major and minor incidents all had things that needed changing but as it stands we will never see something that isn't just another fancy PWR because regulations agencies will not even allow you to make a subscale prototype to even prove that it's safe.
*dirty mind activated*
Shit
and RTFM! Not that it would have helped in this case...
Red phosphorus is regulated because it can be used in the manufacture of methamphetamine, but it's not illegal. It seems to be one of those things mostly left to suppliers to make sure they're not selling to someone who's going to use it to make meth.
Also, he's definitely not at risk of cancer now, though the reason's a bit morbid. He died of an overdose on alcohol, benedryl, and fentanyl in 2016 at age 39. His life after the incident was pretty sad. He did try to start building another reactor in 2007 but he got caught stealing smoke detectors. He was reportedly addicted to cocaine at the time.
David Hahn may have only made a neutron source, but a 14 year old kid named Taylor Wilson actually achieved fusion in 2008 with an IEC device. Then in 2010 he presented a project at the Intel International Science and Engineering fair about active and passive radiation detection in the context of counterterrorism that lead to him getting funding from Homeland Security and the Department of Energy to develop low-cost Cherenkov radiation detectors.
Jeez, that sucks. So much wasted potential. As for Wilson, he sounds like what Hahn might've been able to be, if he had the proper level of guidance and mentorship in his life.
And the myth of what happened shows we know what SHOULD have happened... but no one made sure it was done right.
The 14year old Taylor Wilson built a Farnsworth Fusor?
Achieved “fusion”, you say? That kid Wilson is way Beyond!
It's such a shame people never recognize the geniuses some kids are and just chalk it up to "Their a kid what can they do" and assume they'll be fine and never give them proper help/education on safety. If his parents had just realized their kids intelligence they might have told the school and he could have ended up actually being a pretty famous guy and maybe even go to college early with a scholarship and live a happy life. I'm actually suprised the police and other people involved with dealing with his "reactor incident" didn't realize his intellect. Like when was the last time you heard about a child accidentally radiating part of a town and trying to build a literal reactor.
This video that you are reacting to is leaving out some of the specifics. He did have a substantial amount of material and he was doing experiments that were increasing the radiation output of his "core". He did have a radiation meter and he strapped it to his car to drive around looking for radioactive sources in trash essentially.
As I recall he also used it to find clocks with good amounts of radium. At one point he hit the jackpot and found a clock with a vial of radium paint left inside.
He made a reactor, just not a power reactor. By sandwiching the materials in aluminum foil, he was attempting to induce the Th-232 to undergo neutron-capture, becoming Th-233 which would then decay eventually into uranium-233 (U-233) which is fissile. This appears to have been successful, explaining the skyrocketing radiation levels.
Nah! That was his intention, and probably produced it in very small quantities, but never achieved or was even close to achieving criticality (thankfully). I would rather say the skyrocketing radiation levels where probably due to the radium he extracted from the 100 or so antic alarm clocks and mixing it with the beryllium.
Ra226 -> Rn222 + He4 (4.871 MeV) (97%)
Ra226 -> Rn222m + He4 (4.685MeV) (3%)
Rn222m -> Rn222 + gamma (186keV)
Be9 + He4 (~97keV) -> C12 + n0 (5.1MeV) + gamma (~1.5MeV) (if you use higher energy alpha particles you'll get stronger neutron and gamma rays.)
Be9 also can act as a neutron multiplier if the neutron energy is above ~1.9MeV, but the neutrons released in this process have a less net energy, thus the process is endothermic
Be9 + n0 -> Be8 + 2n0
Be8 -> 2He4 (~92keV)
Also beryllium is a neutron reflector and a moderator and a quite strong one, so the neutrons leaving such a source would be more in the thermic region rather than in fast region. The energy of the high speed neutrons is released in form of gamma radiation and heat.
@@AlexM1983DHUNAntic? 🤣
Sorry but I stopped there. All credibility lost for any of the rest of it.
@@MadScientist267 That's exclusively your problem.
@@MadScientist267 sounds like a you problem buddy, sorry about your tiktok level attention span
@@anomaly3215 Was that an attempt at an insult? 🤣
This PC culture thing has created a bunch of pansies with no clue how to actually insult someone. You're proof 🤣
The source video simplifies a LOT of David's story. He did start much smaller, learning about ionizing radiation, building a neutron source etc. His eventual goal was a breeder reactor, he didn't just start building one from the get go.
StyroPyro knows when he is skipping safety measures, and what he can get away with. Hahn obviously never picked up on those fine distinctions.
I saw in a documentary that he thought building his own little nuclear reactor would help him get a job in the nuclear industry. Then he ended up w/ a criminal record that prevented such employment & radiation exposure that increased his own cancer risk + the guilt of having exposed other people too. That's why he drank so heavily he died of circus of the liver.
"circus of the liver" does sound like an appropriate name when it's achieved by alcohol abuse
"Is this the origin story to Styropyro" had me rolling.
David Hahn (RIP) was several years older than me, but he went to my high school and had all of the same science teachers as him and that’s where I learned about his story from originally.
The way he acquired the materials was ridiculous and when we asked what happened to him, my teacher said he was somewhere in the middle of the ocean on a nuclear submarine-which seemed like the best place for him.
His life ended tragically, but it wasn’t from the exposure to radiation. It ended up being a OD of opiates a few years after he got arrested again for stealing smoke detectors from his apartment building. From what information is out there about his death, it wasn’t necessarily conclusive whether or not it was accidental or intentional, but his life was pretty rough and I think it was more likely a suicide because he either took as much as he did on purpose with the goal of killing himself and/or he was so self-destructive that he just didn’t care whether or not he lived or died, which is still a suicide as far as I’m concerned.
The story of this kid is still an epic tale of shenanigans of the highest order, but this version omits some of the key details either intentionally to prevent copycats or because he didn’t think it was as interesting, but personally I find the fact that he came upon a fairly large supply of radium to be interesting. He was collecting thorium from lantern mantles, but the big jackpot was when he found an old clock that was likely painted by one of the ill fated Radium girls back in the day, and apparently they forgot to remove their container of Radium paint from inside the wooden enclosure, because David just found this thing in an antique store, and I can’t recall if he even bought the clock or just swiped the paint container from the back of it. The way he found it was by driving around with a Geiger Counter (possibly one that was homemade) which was apparently sensitive enough that it actually detected the radioactivity of the Radium from the road, which is why he pulled over and went into the shop to investigate the source and acquire it.
That fairly full bottle of Radium paint is what gave his little neutron gun the extra boost it needed to start triggering the sort of self-sustaining reaction in his makeshift core, and that’s when it actually started to concern him-the kid (likely with ADHD or possibly even ASD) who didn’t give a fuck about safety, which means it was starting to become a serious issue. It resulted in quite the expensive cleanup afterwards.
Our teacher said David was a bright kid, not the best student, but said he was very interested in his science class and was always asking weird “hypothetical” questions that my teacher answered because he never thought this kid was actually going out and acquiring this stuff. Most of what he knew he learned from books or straight up writing letters to the fucking nuclear scientists who worked for Universities or the government, who thought they were talking corresponding with another adult or didn’t think he’d be able to acquire the materials for that information to ever be dangerous-well, they were wrong about that.
Now, I don’t know if what he built qualified as an actual breeder reactor, but whatever you want to call it, his neutron gun charged it up enough that it was a self-sustaining reaction that started growing. No idea if it would’ve ever gotten big enough to cause any serious issues, because I think the minimal amount of material would’ve limited the damage to something less tragic than any of the full blown nuclear disasters, but he sure as shit still caused a fairly serious ecological disaster that required an extensive cleanup. I imagine if he had just walked away from it and left it alone and didn’t alert anyone to the dangerous mess he created, his low level ecological disaster could’ve resulted in a much larger one that could’ve had some serious negative consequences to the health of other people in the neighborhood.
I’m just glad that his Dad was the one who lived closer to my high school than his Mom, because after several explosions in the basement his Dad said no more of those in the basement and that’s when he packed up his science stuff and took it to his Mom’s house that was further away from where I grew up.
some notes/tidbits: he made a neutron source and the plan was to extract uranium out of the czech ore and then use the neutrons to turn it into usable fuel, the radium he got "lucky" i guess and found a whole vial of radium paint in a clock somehow and the thorium is from specifically lantern mantles in old lanterns, as you know the most efficient flame is blue and thats very dim so what youd do is take a fiberglass like sock that has thorium oxide in it and place it over the flame for incandescence which would make a really bright white light from a dim blue flame, all he did was simply burn the mantles then extract it with some sorta acid to get thorium salts and from that you could get thorium metal, nowadays its not surprising that mantles use rare earth metals rather than thorium. also he did actually have a geiger (likely an old civil defense one they gave out in the cold war) and supposedly on the street like 50 feet away he could still read off high levels of radiation hence he had to shut it down
The fact he did it before you could just google something and get 300,000 official websites on how to do something is insane.
Idk, "Insane" seems like quite the overstatement, you do realize that libraries used to be a lot more common and varied (and unfiltered) right? I can find 'unsafe' info in books in my local library today that i won't be able to find on the internet at all. It's just a matter of knowing where to look/who to ask & that would've also been the case at the time 🙂
This comment speaks volumes about the relative uselessness of the Internet generation.
@@reluctanttechnologist3766they learn faster and innovate more
Nah, its not really that insane. Chemistry formularies from even as recently as the 60's would freely give the procedures to make some of the most dangerous shit imaginable.
If you freely published, (or even worse, searched for) this kind of information today, you'd get arrested by every three letter agency the US has, at the same time.
TL;DR it was infinitely easier to find information on dangerous things back in the 70s than it is today, because publishing said information in the modern day gets you arrested, and searching for said information gets you arrested, too.
But still. That's impressive. It's one thing if your a professional with resources around the literal globe and some of the brightest minds on earth to help you. While at most a random teenager would really be able to find without some special sources is go to some local libraries and hope they've got stuff on things like how Nitroglycerin is made and ways to get the ingredients for it. I owe almost all my knowledge to the Internet and probably wouldn't be as intrested as I am in the sciences if I couldn't've just look up things like " NileRed obtaining white phosphurus from home supplies"
You gotta give the kid some credit. Libraries for the most part are designed for the average folk to be able to find useful and intresting information.
While this kid is out here figuring out how to build a simple little nuclear reactor with stuff available to common folk. @@reluctanttechnologist3766
Bright kid, literally and figuratively
He commited suicide
@@gingernutpreacher I thought he ODed.
People need to stop trying to find ways to use "literally" in a sentence.
@@MadScientist267 waaa, waaa, cry more
@@dannydorito6827 Hey I'm not the one that sounds like a total moron.
One of the things from the book vs documentaries was that the Americium neutron gun didn't produce the needed reaction to start off his reactor, that he needed to get his hands on something stronger. So he apparently had a Geiger counter because he found a radium source and used that to replace his Americium neutron gun.
it's apparent you have no idea wtf you are saying. try paying attention to what the nuclear enginner was saying ffs.
👻💬
as an eagle scout, this guy is basically an urban legend
5:04 I believe the correct phrase to describe the situation was "This whole thing was about to go nuclear..."
All of his efforts went to waste. Nuclear waste.
17:14 The old camping lanterns used the mesh( if this is spelled correctly) of what basically is a sock soaked in chemicals to make very bright light with a small flame due to glowing from the heat. The sock part burnt away when using it and left something more close to ash. The chemicals in there were Thorium salts amongst other things. You can still buy these but they are quite rare and the more common ones don't contain Thorium.
Tl;dr They used radioactive salts to make a mesh glow from the heat.
Yeah, exactly, the bright light emitting sock is called a mantle. It's a pretty genius design, if it weren't for the radioactive ash that can/is released...
@@LordStarbeardThorium isn't really all that in itself. The stuff is all around us all the time.
It isn't really a problem until it's poked with a stick to make it get excited.
I still have some of those old mantles as a test source.
If all the people who ignored the “Don’t do this at home” hadn’t…we would not be as far as long as we are. Granted, this kid obviously went too far…but there are so many remarkable discoveries that happened because they ignored so many people who say “you can’t do that” or “No one needs that” or even “Why can’t you just fall in line like everyone else?” Thanks for another great video. I agree with you but I also encourage kids like David…with some supervision)
17:20 the xamping lamps had thorium dioxide in them to improve their incandescent properties. Now i think they substituted it with ceria or some other REE oxide.
can still get thorium from welding rods
ah yes xamping
@@MarxBoi17and the elusive ree oxides...
The movie with John Lithgow, “The Manhattan Project” about a kid making a nuclear bomb as a school science project was “sorta” based on this story. But he made a bomb and not a power plant.
Camping Lanterns had mantels that when heated were brighter than the Propane/Kerosene by itself by using Thorium Dioxide as part of the materials in the mantel (mesh) over the Bunsen Burner type of device…a student of Bunsen was the first to develop camping lanterns.
To add insult to the injury of anti-proliferation short-sightedness, the breeder reactors don't actually produce the isotope of plutonium that can be used to make nuclear weapons, it's only useful as fuel (or, technically, in a "dirty" bomb, but you can do that without plutonium.) IIRC, the plutonium produced isn't even extracted from the core at any point. It's just a transition material as the chemical processes in the core convert spent fuel into recycled fuel.
Back when this kid was doing these experiments, you could still go out and buy dynamite, and blasting caps at any hardware store with just money, a driver's license and your own signature. Strike anywhere kitchen matches were literally everywhere, but not anymore. Shipping those matches requires a HAZMAT fee now, but back then all wooden kitchen matches were strike anywhere matches. You could buy kiddie chemistry sets that were just loaded with all kinds of very highly dangerous chemicals. Back when all these neat things were available to everyday consumers, we were all going to have a nuclear reactor in our basement, in the near future, as a power supply for your home.
It's sad that no-one directed him for the betterment of mankind.
David did have a geiger counter. He would drive around with it on trying to find sources of radioactive material.
17:15 camping lanterns have thorium oxide mantle for its incandescence when hit with lantern flame.
"aren't you a little young to be making a nuclear reactor in your backyard?"
"yes, yes i am."
"....ok then."
I was one of those infinitely curious kids and did similarly to acquire reagents for chemistry experiments. I stopped most chemistry dabbling after the second explosive incident in my home. Dad was smart and bought me electronics kits to occupy my time, so thanks for that, pop! Thankfully I never had any interest in nuclear until much later in life, and I would probably have enjoyed nuclear engineering just as much as electrical and software engineering. Today, I am a safety-obsessed person. I feel that education, mentoring and supervision are the keys. Thanks for your review--it's fun to rewatch videos with you.
To be fair, the policr thinking he had an atomic bomb probably wouldn't have been too far out of the norm considering they probably had to deal with this guy regularly causing explosions...
If he had a Geiger counter with him in the car at the time he was pulled over, and told the cops "Don't believe me? Use that."... TIKKATIKKATIKKATIKKA yeah, even a two-digit-IQ cop is gonna take it a bit more seriously.
As a mining engineer, I'd like to say that uranium is generally mined through an underground leaching/fracking-like process, especially with higher-grade ore deposits where dust inhalation would certainly become an issue.
Open cut drill and blast techniques are still used elsewhere in the world with lower-grade deposits; Heap leaching is where very low concentrated piles of uranium ore are stacked and a solution is pumped through to extract it.
To be honest, while I have my gripes with fracking due to its side-effects in Oklahoma, the underground fracking/leaching method is the most effective because it minimizes dust and exposure to the otherwise hazardous byproducts generated by traditional mining methods (drill and blast), but is dependent on the geology of the ore body. Also the waste is not disposed of in the same way as fracking oil.
2:49: "Why .... this isn't a parenting review channel it's more of a nuclear thing, but that's crazy." KILLED ME
The epitome of : Stand back I'm going to try science!
Thanks for another well-done video. When watching it, I switched back and forth between "that's amazing!" and "that's insane!" most of the time. I think it is fair to say that several major agencies like the NRC dropped the radioactive ball on this particular case in a big, big way.
I like my reactors, but not in a million years would I consider building a miniature one up on the attic.
And you are spot on when you say; "All these missed opportunities. The kid had so much potential!" Really too bad the way he ended up.
23:07 from the book, The Radioactive Boy Scout, (Silverstein, 2004) he did possess a used Geiger counter. It was probably out of calibration.
This stuff was pretty easy to get in the 70s and 80's. My childhood chemistry set would get someone on a "list" today. 😂 These are all things I thought about as a kid just had mentoring and kept it to an intellectual exercise. Lasers were more cool anyways. 😊
I synthesised a small amount of Nitrogen-triioidide on the bathroom and after letting it dry, tapped it lightly with a wrapped hammer. I wore safety goggles, ear plugs, an old wool coat and oven gloves, but my mother was not pleased with the outward radiating purple stain from the point of impact on the granite floor. She made me vigorously scrub the floor for a long time, but I could not fully remove the stain. I got the iodide from my chemistry teacher with his approval (only a few small crystals). I had far more dangerous chemicals in the house though, 1,4-di-amino-benzene was probably the most dangerous compound I had. I used this in a reagent mixture to determinate certain lichens. I made sure to have a chemical safety card handy of every chemical I used and acted accordingly, so apart from this bathroom incident, I never caused any harm to myself and people around me.
Good original video and very insightful comments on your part, exactly what I would expect from a nuclear engineer resction channel. Excellent job.
Remember Styropyro is a professor in a community college. He was working on his Ph.D. so don't laugh at him, he's not dumb. Btw, his name is Drake.
3:30
" Strike anywhere " match tips:Phosphorus sesquisulfide.
I appreciate your videos, they are both informative from your perspective with your level of expertise and they’re also entertaining!
Thorium was used to coat lantern mantles in propane lanterns. The gas flame doesn't produce a lot of light, the thorium heats up and essentially functions as the equivalent of an incandescent lamp filament emitting a lot of visible light.
Nice, I've been waiting for your video on this story
Finally, I’ve been waiting for this reaction so long
I just read the book about David, The Radioactive Boyscout. This is a story of parental and institutional neglect as much as his chemical prowess and ingenuity.
Yeah, camping lantern mantles used to have thorium in them - fairly radioactive, but not too bad…unless you get enough of them
I enjoyed your video here and others you have done. You have a good practical attitude towards nuclear stuff.
17:19 they're referring to the thorium mantle, the its basically a small fabric bag (like a tiny sock) that fits over the gas tube inside the glass part of the lantern and glows really bright when burning the gas.
"Atomic Energy Badge"... bugger that... I was watching a famous and factual British documentary series called "The Goodies (1970 - 1982)"... and apparently in the Boy Scouts you can aim for "The World Domination Badge"! Yep... its True!
Im glad you made your videos louder!
Really good reaction videos, I have been watching you for awhile now and your videos are always very good. Keep up the good work, and, if you get to be a big channel one day... Number one: don't change the way you make your videos and Number two: DON'T LET THE FAME GET TO YOUR HEAD! (Lol.)
I made a small fusion reactor in college, but never used deuterium in it to produce fusion. It was a cool lamp though, from the glow of the tiny fraction of remaining gas being ionized at 50kV DC being confined to the center.
@@c2n10 Okay, this is pretty cool. Maybe I should look into it. I take it you need to be a licensed chemist to get a hold of some of these materials?
@@koneecheI think so. But you could always try ✨Crime✨
@@koneeche not at all, the main barrier to constructing a proper electrostatic fusion reactor is money.
For a well built fusor expect to shill out around 10-20,000 USD for a machined stainless/aluminium reactor vessel, Turbomolecular pump and roughing vacuum pump, vacuum hoses or bellows, kf flanges, a sizeable negative polarity high voltage power supply, deuterium gas cylinder, gas injection and control equipment, high voltage vacuum feedthroughs, scintillation detector, bubble neutron detector and some window portholes.
With all that and some elbow grease to put it together you stand a decent chance at fusing two deuterium atoms together and making some helium and at the end of it all you'll make less energy out than you put in.
Certainly beautiful and by fair the easiest diy nuclear reactor to build and run however it ultimately has very little practical uses.
Good way of pitching yourself to a university though.
@@koneechenot at all. At least not in the US
Ok. That's cool though
2:50 "... this isn't a parenting review channel...": Growing up in the 50's, the lucky among us got things like erector sets, radio kits, electronics kits and yes, chemistry sets for birthdays and christmas. And they evidently weren't regulated. You could make really dangerous things... and kids got hurt. But I bet more brilliant scientists came out of that period than any period before or since.
In a timeline where this poor dude got the mental help he needed instead of being completely ignored, he could have turned into a brilliant nuclear physicist or engineer.
Instead, he got no help, and died before age 40 from a drug and alcohol overdose.
The Mantle in a camping Lantern used to have thorium in it
I’ve been to EBR-1. Stood above the core (empty) it is a museum and is worth a visit, it’s in eastern Idaho.
At 15:19 I had a meltdown of uncontrolled laughter. I need to use the restroom now. I'll be back.
I love that after all that, the EPA was the agency they sent in to take care of it 😂
Yea, I've heard of a guy in the next town that used to make his own explosives, and of course he finally blew one of his hands of and it also made him blind. But don't think that stopped him, he went on with it, and managed. I don't know if the story is true, but it wouldn't surprise me either. This is btw over in Sweden, the guy was supposedly living in Ulricehamn. I'd love to hear if someone else heard of it.
Regarding "Social Engineering", that David was using is actually extremely common and one of the easiest ways to obtain mainly information or access. This is of course mainly used by hackers and penetration testers. For those who like that kind of topics, I can recommend listening to the podcast "Darknet Diaries". One of the most notorious hackers which was a master at this was Kevin Mitnick.
If nobody told you yet, the camping lanterns used to have thorium mantles for more complete combustion and brighter light.
Have you looked at all into the natural nuclear fission reactor that happened in Oklo in Gabon? I don’t know if there’s any particular video about it, but it’s real cool, and was the very likely the first nuclear reactor on earth… even predating humans!
Yes, I talk about it in my reaction to Sam O’Nella’s pre industrial surgeries video: czcams.com/video/qDsRfAFgv9o/video.htmlsi=qXPGpDgNb8ylUPi7
The video being watched left out a lot of info. The takeaways are true, he had potential. He also was what people now refer to as "being on the spectrum". He later joined the Navy, hoping to be involved with the nuclear programs, but that didn't happen. Supposedly ended up with drug problems and was busted trying to acquire more smoke detectors, which he was not allowed to do by court decrees.
I suddenly realised that kid is my age! Just before he was arrested, our school took us on a tour of Australia's only nuclear reactor. It's about the size of a washing machine. Anyway there was heaps to do at the site... they gave us souvenirs- some aluminium discs. When I got home mum asked me what it was... I just said "plutonium". My brother, catching on to the fact there was no possible way I could have come home with several 1 inch discs of plutonium, started to fake being scared and asked me if I was crazy. The whole thing culminated in a phrase my mother sincerely shouted: "I will not have plutonium in my house!" Good times...😂😂
ur reaction at 20:29 was priceless! pls tell me this is no longer possible lol
it's not, Czechoslovakia was dissolved in 1993...
@@LordStarbeard lol I meant being able to order stuff like this without proper identification over the phone
I was able to get a small (like the size of a quarter) amount of uranium ore off Amazon when I was in like 5th grade, so not possible on a huge scale but still technically possible
So imagine he went unnoticed and then got to a nuclear facility for his badge...walks in and all the alarms just instantly goes off.
Hi!
What I've read about this is: his idea was to use the neutron source to create U233 and Pu239 and also Am241 is fissile and has a critical mass of 57 kg, but after a neutron capture about 10% of it can be turned into Am242m which has a critical mass of only 5kg when a neutron reflector is applied, which for he was intending to use beryllium.
Of course he still would never ever have enough material for that but that was his plan.
Red phos, you scraped from things. Extracting things and sourcing them for me was most of the fun. This was pre banning of red phos, as well. Cautious friend and brave friend, day one dream team. 5:12
"It is pretty near midnight, Dear. Is David still out in the potting shed making meth? Well, you have to admire the kid's work ethic." Clearly, the young man had great potential but desperately needed guidance. Don't believe it was too late to get him on track after the incident, but the intervention wasn't there. Instead of a Taylor Wilson story, it is a tragedy that ended with mental health issues and early death.
The story is a little vague, I read a book about this guy evidently he was trying to use the neutron gun he made to change the thorium he had to uranium 233 and from what I understand is he was collecting antique clocks and found a whole vial of radium paint in an old grandfather clock. (I presume it was stashed there as extra paint to repaint the clock face).... You asked if he had a Geiger counter he did that's how he found the radium vial in the clock.
There is thorium in lantern mantles,
Burn the mantles,
Mix the lantern mantle powder with lithium from a battery,
Then wrap it up in aluminium foil as a ball, make sure it's not going to leak,
Place it a can filled with cooking oil, you don't want the oil inside the foil ball,
Heat the cooking oil with a torch,
This gives you radioactive thorium which can be used to make uranium or plutonium.
Ah yes. David Hahn. No nuclear series is complete without him.
I would like you to react to the video about the russian nuclear heaters from the video called nuclear bonfire.
The full title is:
"The Lia Radiological Accident - Nuclear Bonfire" by Kyle Hill
David looks like a teenaged Bart Simpson. Speaking of which, I hope they don't actually hire Homers to run reactors.
okaaaaaaaay fine, i'll subscribe, this is like the 5th reaction video i've watched
I think the lesson from this story is "When someone calls claiming to be someone and starts asking about nuclear things, verify who they are!"
i dont know why everyone slags him off. he never broke any laws, he didnt get prosecuted for his researches. he is somewhat of a hero of mine.
Come on! The liquid sodium coolant you're talking about is actually called NaK , an amalgamation of sodium and potassium to the likes of which reminds one of a cross between mercury and cesium, it made an excellent coolant, the only thing about it was if the system sprung a leak NaK literally erupts like a flame thrower !
Great video !
He looks like you !
I’m surprised the original video left out the most tragic aspect of his story…
Shortly after the EPA disposed of his makeshift lab, his mother(who had previously been institutionalized when he was a toddler) swung back into a manic depressive state, blaming herself for her sons now criminal record and feared for her custodial rights and home ownership. She took her own life in 1996 when David was only 19.
And as if it couldn’t get any worse, David graduated high school directionless with no motivation to attend college. He enlisted in the Navy and served on a Nuclear powered aircraft carrier. Sounds great for him, right? Wrong, he was never employed to research nuclear energy or work with it; he was instead limited to interior communications.
This is where his drug addiction began, which later claimed his life.
One has to wonder just how different his life would have been had he received proper guidance in his youth. Perhaps his mother wouldn’t have been hit so hard with mental health issues. Maybe he would’ve gone to college and enjoyed a career in nuclear energy - or at least have been able to work as a nuclear energy specialist on the aircraft carrier he served on. And maybe one of these hypothetical scenarios or a combination of both could have prevented his eventual drug overdose.
Rest in peace David! You were a genius in your own right. I’m hoping a movie gets made about the mad scientist teen who irradiated his hometown from his mother’s potting shed!
The problem in Flint is the city government cheaped out and didn't use the right chemicals for treatment -- which caused the lime scale that had built up inside lead pipes to dissolve, exposing the lead to slightly acidic water. Result: lead in the water. And it wouldn't appear cloudy as he shows -- it would be clear, because you can't see the lead salt dissolved in the water anymore than you can see table salt dissolved in the water.
i've been binging your videos for the past 4 hours and I just love the way that you explain these concepts in an easy-to-digest way. Go nuclear!
In fact there was another boy scout who was given the proper mentoring. His name is Taylor wilson and he achieved controlled nuclear fusion at the age of 14. BToday he is a physicist. He is what David might have become witth proper guidance. He has a wikipedia page worth looking at
Smoke detectors contain a tiny chip made from Americium. Radium clock faces. And if I remember correctly, those old gas camping lanterns contain Thorium oxides in there mantels (those little white bags found in old gas lanterns).
Red phosphorus is used for matches, though it can be used to make white phosphorus, which is significantly more dangerous than red phosphorus. Calling it undesirable would be a bit of an understatement as it's a rather dangerous substance and should be handled with almost as much care as HF/bone hurt juice...
Thanks to David, Czechoslovakia stopped taking phone calls for uranium.
His parents should have worked with him to get him into a college program that would let him learn and explore this stuff safely, in a lab, with safety equipment. He's clearly smart, he could have easily gotten some kind of mentorship or something by just explaining his knowledge to the mentor. It's really a shame his parents failed him and his beautiful mind.
David causes explosions with his chemistry set
His parents: Stop breaking the house! Go to the basement!
David causes an explosion that causes him severe injury to his hands, arms, and eyes
His parents move him to his mothers pottery shed: Be careful from now on! We won't check on you though.
David creates nuclear fission in his backyard.
His parents to the neighbors: Oh, I don't know how our boy could go so astray!
so.. lithium... thank you, I was stuck on that part...
When I initially heard about this, I was under the impression he ended up being recruited to work with the government and managed to live happily ever after. Now, I'm finding out that is far from the truth, and that he actually died of alcohol poisoning after turning to drinking, likely to cope with the guilt he had from the knowledge that his childhood experiments put everyone around him in danger. That is so heartbreaking.
Also, I'm a bit skeptical that 40k people were exposed to "cancer causing" levels of radiation. How did they measure that?
I know there is the people out in California who were making reactors without any containment vessels. They experience partial fuel melts due to clogging of the nak cooling channels if I remember correctly. I believe it was also a breeder reactor but it's been a long time since I looked this up.
I'm not sure if they're associated with the giant superfund site that is being cleaned up from radioactive experiments.
Why wouldn't there have been fission? Americium 241 is fissile and Thorium is fertile. Even if he didn't have enough material for a critical mass wouldn't hitting either of those with a neutron source cause individual fissions?
Hardware store my man, you can make every item david did with chemicals from your local hardware store.
He also got some radioactive material on his watch at one point and it left burns.
Nuclear Boy Scout's story was once recounted in an old issue of Reader's Digest, so I had a chance to read about it before.
Some camping lights have a mesh that had/have thorium in them to improve brightness.
We learned about this guy back in high school when we learned about the Manhattan Project, because it happened about half an hour away from us.
Check out William Osman's garage x-ray machine
You really added a lot to this video. Nice job! I had no idea about breeder reactors and their implementation.
like driving a nuclear submarine before crawling.... lol
in 1986, there was a movie called "The Manhattan Project" about a kid who builds a nuclear bomb with plutonium stolen from a government lab at a college, it's a good thing he never saw that movie.
5:43 I think this is a case of the parents/guardians not knowing that they don't know.
@T. Folse I work with a machine that detects leaks throu krypton gass an we have exactly such a yellow barrel for low radioaktive waste like towls or saturated O-Rings.