The Radioactive Boy Scout

David Hahn, a suburban Detroit teenager, was obsessed with science, leading to increasingly ambitious basement experiments. His fascination turned to nuclear energy, prompting him to build a nuclear breeder reactor in his backyard shed for a Boy Scout badge. Posing as a physics professor, David gathered information from government and industry experts, scavenging radioactive materials to construct a device that emitted toxic radiation. This unsupervised project led to an environmental catastrophe, endangering his town and resulting in the EPA shutting down his lab and burying it as radioactive waste.