The Radioactive Boy Scout: The True Story of a Boy and His Backyard Nuclear Reactor
by Ken Silverstein
- Used
- very good
- Paperback
- first
- Condition
- Very Good/No Jacket
- ISBN 10
- 096593408X
- ISBN 13
- 9780965934084
- Seller
-
Winchester, New Hampshire, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Synopsis
Growing up in suburban Detroit, David Hahn was fascinated by science, and his basement experiments--building homemade fireworks, brewing moonshine, and concocting his own self-tanning lotion--were more ambitious than those of other boys. While working on his Atomic Energy badge for the Boy Scouts, David's obsessive attention turned to nuclear energy. Throwing caution to the wind, he plunged into a new project: building a nuclear breeder reactor in his backyard garden shed.In The Radioactive Boy Scout, veteran journalist Ken Silverstein recreates in brilliant detail the months of David's improbable nuclear quest. Posing as a physics professor, David solicited information on reactor design from the U.S. government and from industry experts. (Ironically, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was his number one source of information.) Scavenging antiques stores and junkyards for old-fashioned smoke detectors and gas lanterns--both of which contain small amounts of radioactive material--and following blueprints he found in an outdated physics textbook, David cobbled together a crude device that threw off toxic levels of radiation. His unsanctioned and wholly unsupervised project finally sparked an environmental catastrophe that put his town's forty thousand residents at risk and caused the EPA to shut down his lab and bury it at a radioactive dumpsite in Utah.An outrageous account of ambition and, ultimately, hubris that sits comfortably on the shelf next to such offbeat science books as Driving Mr. Albert and stories of grand capers like Catch Me If You Can, The Radioactive Boy Scout is a real-life adventure with the narrative energy of a first-rate thriller.From the Hardcover edition.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Gene The Book Peddler (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 024105
- Title
- The Radioactive Boy Scout: The True Story of a Boy and His Backyard Nuclear Reactor
- Author
- Ken Silverstein
- Format/Binding
- Paperback
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good
- Jacket Condition
- No Jacket
- Edition
- First Printing
- ISBN 10
- 096593408X
- ISBN 13
- 9780965934084
- Publisher
- Random House
- Date Published
- 2004
- Size
- 12mo - over 6¾" - 7&
- Bookseller catalogs
- NON-FICTION;
Terms of Sale
Gene The Book Peddler
BOOKS MAY BE RETURNED ONCE AUTHORIZATION IS GOTTEN FOR ANY BOOK SHIPPED NOT AS DESCRIBED WITHIN 10 DAYS OF RECEIPT. ALL ORDERS SHIPPED WITHIN 24 HOURS.
About the Seller
Gene The Book Peddler
About Gene The Book Peddler
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Trade Paperback
- Used to indicate any paperback book that is larger than a mass-market paperback and is often more similar in size to a hardcover...
- Tight
- Used to mean that the binding of a book has not been overly loosened by frequent use.
- 12mo
- A duodecimo is a book approximately 7 by 4.5 inches in size, or similar in size to a contemporary mass market paperback. Also...