As an adult, Hahn served in the United States Navy and United States Marine Corps. Hahn was also the subject of Silverstein's 2004 book The Radioactive Boy Scout. While the incident was not widely publicized initially, it became better known following a 1998 Harper's Magazine article by journalist Ken Silverstein.

Hahn attained Eagle Scout rank shortly after his lab was dismantled. His mother's property was cleaned up by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ten months later as a Superfund cleanup site. When Hahn warned them that the material was radioactive, the police contacted federal authorities. 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.

Hahn's goal was to build and demonstrate a homemade breeder reactor. Building a neutron source in his mother's backyardĭavid Charles Hahn (Octo– 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.Ī 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.

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