David Charles Hahn (October 30, 1976 – September 27, 2016), sometimes called the "Radioactive Boy Scout" or the "Nuclear Boy Scout", was an American nuclear radiation enthusiast who built a homemade neutron source at the age of seventeen. A scout in the Boy Scouts of America, Hahn conducted his experiments in secret in a backyard shed at his mother's house in Commerce Township, Michigan. Hahn's goal was to build and demonstrate a homemade breeder reactor. While he never managed to build a reactor, in August 1994 Hahn's progress attracted the attention of local police when they found material in his vehicle that troubled them during a stop for a separate matter. When Hahn warned them that the material was radioactive, the police contacted federal authorities. His mother's property was cleaned up by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ten months later as a Superfund cleanup site. Hahn attained Eagle Scout rank shortly after his lab was dismantled. While the incident was not widely publicized initially, it became better known following a 1998 Harper's Magazine article by journalist Ken Silverstein. Hahn was also the subject of Silverstein's 2004 book The Radioactive Boy Scout. As an adult, Hahn served in the United States Navy and United States Marine Corps. He was subsequently treated for mental illness, and his death at age 39 was related to drug and alcohol use. Background Hahn was born in Royal Oak, Michigan. Creation of the neutron source Hahn was fascinated by chemistry and spent years conducting amateur chemistry experiments, which sometimes caused small explosions and other mishaps. He was inspired in part by reading The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments and tried to collect samples of every element in the periodic table, including the radioactive ones. He later received a merit badge in Atomic Energy and became fascinated with the idea of creating a breeder reactor in his home. Hahn diligently amassed radioactive material by collecting small amounts from household products, such as americium from smoke detectors, thorium from camping lantern mantles, radium from clocks, and tritium from gunsights. His "reactor" was a bored-out block of lead, and he used lithium from $1,000 worth of purchased batteries to purify the thorium ash using a Bunsen burner. Hahn ultimately hoped to create a breeder reactor, using low-level isotopes to transform samples of thorium and uranium into fissile isotopes. His homemade neutron source was often incorrectly referred to as a