David Hahn was an ordinary American teenager who went to extraordinary lengths to obtain his boy scout badge – he built a nuclear reactor in his back yard.
There is hardly a boy or a girl alive who is not keenly interested in finding out about things. And that’s exactly what chemistry is: FINDING OUTABOUT THINGS—finding out what things are made of and what changes they undergo. What things? Every thing! (The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments)
Golf Manor is the kind of place where nothing unusual is supposed to happen, the kind of place where people five precisely because it is more than 25 miles outside Detroit and all the complications attendant on that city. The kind of place where money buys a bit more land, perhaps a second bathroom, and so reassures residents that they’re safely in the bosom of the middle class. Every element of Golf Manor invokes one form of security or another, beginning with the name of the suburb itself – taken from the 18-hole course at its entrance — and the community in which it is nestled, Commerce Township. The houses and trees are both old and varied enough to make Golf Manor neighborhood than a suburb, and the few features that do convey suburbia- a sign at the entrance saying, “We have many children but none to spare. Please drive carefully” — have a certain Back to the Future charm. Most Golf Manor residents remain there until they die, and then they are replaced by young couples with kids. In short, it is the kind of place where on a typical day, the only thing lurking around the comer is a Mister Softee ice cream van.
但1995年6月26日，不是典型的一天。问dottie pease。当她拒绝了Pinto Drive时，Pease看到了11名男子在她精心修剪的草坪上蜂拥而至。他们的注意力似乎集中在大型木制灌封棚上，依靠链节围栏将她的财产分成邻居的围栏。三个男人们曾经有过通风的月亮套装，并继续用电锯拆除灌封棚，像木头一样填充到大型钢桶中，以放射性的警告标志为主。暂停从未注意到隔壁房子的普通中的任何东西。
一个中年夫妇迈克尔Polasek和Patty Hahn，住在那里。在一些周末，他们被帕蒂的十几岁儿子大卫加入。然而，由于一群神经邻居蜷缩在一起，请暂时听到一个晚上醒来的一个居民声称，看看令人兴奋的棚子发光。“我很令人不安，”召回召回。“我打电话给我的丈夫。我说，Da-a-ve，有趣的西装有男人在这里走出去。你必须做点什么。“
发现有趣的西装中的男人是危险地照射的灌封棚，该地区的40,000名居民可能面临风险。在公开上，白白的遇见答应了高尔夫庄园的居民，他们没有任何恐惧，并且到这一天既不达到我采访的那些人都不知道环境保护局（EPA）侵犯其邻居的真正原因。当被问到时，大多数咕噜咕噜咕噜咕噜。真相更加奇怪：由隔壁的男孩David Hahn挑起了高尔夫庄园清理，他试图在他母亲的灌封棚中建造核饲养反应堆作为男童童子军的一部分。
大卫的故事似乎是值得注意的，但在FPA拒绝发出大卫的名字时，虽然一些当地记者了解它，但他和任何家庭成员都不同意接受采访。即使是联邦和州官员宣传清理的只是学会了一小部分发生的事情。然后，在1996年，Jay Gourley是华盛顿特区自然资源新闻服务的通讯员，遇到了一个关于案件的小型报纸项目，并联系了大卫哈恩。柯利后来通过了对我的研究，我随后采访了这个故事的主角，包括大卫 - 现在，弗吉尼亚诺福克的一个22岁的水手驻扎在诺福克。
I met David in the hope of making sense not only of his experiments but of him. The archetypal American suburban boy learns how to hit a fade-away jump shot, change a car’s oil, perform minor carpentry feats. If he’s a boy scout he masters the art of starting a fire by rubbing two sticks together, and if he’s a typical adolescent pyro, he transforms tennis-ball cans into cannons. David Hahn taught himself to build a neutron gun. He figured out a way to dupe officials at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission into providing him with the crucial information he needed in his attempt to build a breeder reactor. then he obtained and purified radioactive elements such as radium and thorium.
我已经看到了大卫的童年照片，他看起来完全正常，甚至天使，金发和榛子的眼睛，而且他长大了，巨石四肢和桃子模糊胡子。尽管如此，当我去诺福克去见他时，我期待了一些辉煌或痴迷的身体表现。但我所看到的只是在图片中的清洁小孩的甜菜版本。虽然礼貌，大卫的方式奇怪地看跌，直到我们开始讨论他的核冒险。然后，持续五个小时，照明浅谈卷烟，以强调，大卫热衷于他的后院实验室劳动。他告诉我，他如何使用咖啡过滤器和泡菜罐来处理镭和硝酸等致命物质，并且他泄露了他所用的各种封面和别名获得放射性物质。害羞和与绘制的少年，大卫对他的项目唯一的几个朋友，永远不要让任何人见证他的实验。他的育种者反应器保护是一种手段 - 尽管逃离青春期的创伤一致。
在原子弹的制作中，理查德罗得岛指出，开创性的美国物理学家的心理概况非常相似。经常是一个情感偏远的专业人士的长子，他 - 几乎都是男人 - 在童年时代是一个贪婪的读者，往往感到孤独，害羞和远离同学。（系列化学实验金书）
David’s parents, Ken and Patty Hahn divorced when he was a toddler. Ken is an automotive engineer for General Motors, as is his second wife, Kathy Missig. David lived with his father and stepmother in suburban Clinton Township, about 30 miles north of Detroit. Ken Hahn worked extraordinarily long hours. With close-cropped hair and a proclivity for short-sleeved dress shirts, Ken radiates a coolness that, combined with his constant preoccupation, must have been confounding to a child. Yet for all his starchiness, it was Kathy who was David’s chief disciplinarian.
David将周末和假期与他的母亲和男友，迈克尔Polasek，一个善良但坚硬的退休叉缆车运营商。高尔夫庄园与克林顿乡镇人群相似，但两个家庭情绪不可能更加不同。帕蒂哈恩于1996年在房子里自杀，但迈克尔仍然居住在那里被她的照片包围。他保留了五只猫和一尘不染的家庭，看起来像复古摇滚沙娜的成员。
Despite the fact that David was shuffled between households, his early years were seemingly ordinary. He played baseball and soccer, and joined the boy scouts. An abrupt change came at the age of 10, when Kathy’s father, also an engineer for GM, gave David The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments. The book promised to open doors to a brave new world and offered instructions on how to set up a home laboratory. David swiftly became immersed and by the age of 12 was digesting his father’s college chemistry textbooks without difficulty. When he spent the night at Golf Manor, his mother would often wake to find him asleep on the living-room floor surrounded by open volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
In his father’s house, David set up a laboratory in his small bedroom. He bought beakers, Bunsen burners, test tubes, and other items that are commonly found in a child’s chemistry set. David, though, was not conducting typical adolescent experiments. By 14, he had fabricated nitroglycerine.
David’s parents admired his interest in science but were alarmed by the spills and blasts that became a regular event at the Hahn household. After David destroyed his bedroom, the walls were pocked, and the carpet was so stained that it had to be ripped out — Ken and Kathy banished his experiments to the basement.
大卫这很好。科学使他逃离了他成功的东西，同时升华了少年的失败感，愤怒和尴尬地进入了一些非常大的爆炸。大卫在快餐关节，杂货店和家具仓库举办了一系列课后工作，但工作仅仅是融资他的实验的手段。从来没有热情的学生，总是一个可怕的拼写，大卫在学校落后。在他在Chippewa Valley高中的初级年度 - 在他在他的后院秘密开展核实验时，他几乎失败了毕业所需的状态数学和阅读测试（尽管他在科学中进行了测试）。他的科学攻击较少，更少的朋友时间较少，但在很多高中他确实有一个女朋友，希瑟·埃杜德特，三年他的初级。希瑟说他是甜蜜和照顾，但并不总是完美的约会。希瑟的妈妈，Donna Beaudette，这样说：“他是一个漂亮的孩子，总是有杰出的，但[在她的第二次婚礼前的日子里]我们不得不告诉他不要和任何人交谈。他可以吃喝，但是，为了上帝的缘故，不要与客人谈论食物的化学成分。“
Not even his scout troop was spared David’s scientific enthusiasm. He once appeared at a scout meeting with a bright orange face caused by an overdose of canthaxanthin, which he was taking to test methods of artificial tanning. One summer, he was expelled from scout camp when he stole a number of smoke detectors to disassemble for parts he required for his experiments.
到目前为止，大卫的混合物的最不法味是烟花和月光。但是，相信大卫的实验和不稳定的行为是他制造和销售毒品，肯和凯西开始点击公共图书馆，大卫告诉他们他的研究。总是他将在那里承诺，被一堆巨大的化学书籍包围。但是肯和凯西没有救助，并且担心他会在家里级别，他们禁止大卫独自一人。凯西开始常常搜索大卫的房间和处理她发现隐藏在床下的任何化学品和设备以及壁橱内。大卫并没有被吓倒。一天晚上，正如肯和凯西坐在客厅里看电视，房子被地下室的爆炸震撼了。在那里，他们发现大卫在地板上撒谎，他的眉毛吸烟。没有意识到红磷是一种热量的，大卫一直用螺丝刀砸到它并点燃它。他被赶到医院，让他的眼睛冲洗，甚至几个月后，也必须定期前往眼科医生，让塑料磷容器从他的眼睛里拔下碎片。
Kathy then forbade David from experimenting in her home. So he shifted his base of operations to his mother’s potting shed in Golf Manor. Both Patty Hahn and Michael Polasek admired David for the endless hours he spent in his new lab, but neither of them had any idea what he was up to.
很少有人遵守他在做什么。在大学里采取化学课程的Ken Hahn可以追随大卫告诉他的一些东西，但以为他夸大了关注。“我从来没有看到他在黑暗中变成绿色或发光，”他说。“我可能太容易了。”
It probably didn’t feel that way to David. Although Ken is immensely proud of David’s experiments now that they have a certain notoriety, at the time they represented a breakdown in discipline. As fathers are wont to do, Ken felt the solution lay in a goal that he didn’t himself achieve as a child — Eagle scout. As teenagers are wont to do, David subverted that goal.
除了显示“侦察精神”之外，Eagle Scouts还必须获得21个优点徽章。11个是强制性的，例如社区中的急救和公民身份。最终的10是可选的;侦察员可以选择几十个选择，从美国企业到木工。大卫当选为赚取原子能一枚奖章。His scoutmaster, Joe Auito, says he’s the only boy to have done so in the history of Clinton Township Troop 371. David’s atomic-energy merit-badge pamphlet was brazenly pro-nuclear, which is no surprise since it was prepared with the help of Westinghouse Electric, the American Nuclear Society, and the Edison Electric Institute, a trade group of utility companies, some of which run nuclear power plants.
大卫于1991年5月10日被授予他的原子能优势徽章，五个月害羞的15个生日。为了赚取它，他展示了一个图表，展示了核裂变如何发生，访问过医院放射学单位，了解放射性同位素的医疗用途（解体和发出其他颗粒和能量的放射性元件），并使用果汁可以制造模型反应器，外套衣架，苏打稻草，厨房火柴和橡皮筋。但到目前为止，他的野心越来越大。作为Auito的妻子和部队财务主管，芭芭拉，召回，“典型的孩子[在Merit徽章上工作]将去医生办公室并询问X射线机。戴夫不得不出去尝试建立一个反应堆。“
What is a breeder reactor? This simplistic description comes from a publication that David obtained from the Department of Energy (DOE): “Imagine you have a car and begin a long drive. When you start, you have half a tank of gas. When you return home, instead of being nearly empty, your gas tank is full. A breeder reactor is like this magic car. A breeder reactor not only generates electricity, but it also produces new fuel.”
所有反应器，常规和育种者，依赖于天然放射性元素的临界桩 - 通常是铀-335或钚-239 - 作为持续的反应链的“燃料”称为裂变。核工业用来吹嘘育种者作为国家能源需求的神奇解决方案。1961年，政府在爱达荷的测试网站上开设了两位实验育种者。在1963年的大型粉丝中，底特律爱迪生开设了全国第一，唯一的商业育种饲养厂。以下十年，国会为田纳西州的Clinch River饲养反应堆拨款数十亿美元。希望在尼克松年的原子能委员会主席Glenn Seaborg跑得很高，预测育种者将成为新兴核经济的骨干，钚可能是廉政行合者，以替代金币作为我们货币体系的标准。“
这种乐观主义被证明是无人物的。第一个爱达荷州饲养员必须在遭受部分核心崩溃后关闭;第二种饲养员产生电，但没有新的燃料。Fermi Plant - 距离克林顿镇仅有60英里 - 受到机械问题，事故和预算超支的困扰。1966年，在冷却系统发生故障后，植物的核心遭受了部分崩溃;六年后，它被永久关闭。
如果他知道这些挫折大卫并没有阻止。His inspiration came from the nuclear pioneers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries: Antoine Henri Becquerel, the French physicist who, along with Pierre and Marie Curie, received the Nobel prize in chemistry in 1903 for discovering radioactivity; Frederic and Irene Joliet-Curie, who received the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1935 for producing the first artificial radioisotope; Sir James Chadwick, who won the Nobel prize in physics the same year for discovering the neutron; and Enrico Fermi, who created the world’s first sustainable nuclear chain reaction, a crucial step leading to the production of atomic energy and atomic bombs. Unlike his predecessors, however, David did not have vast financial support from the state, no laboratory save for a musty potting shed, no proper instruments or safety devices, and, by far his chief impediment, no legal means of obtaining radioactive materials. To get round this last obstacle, David utilized a number of cover stories and concocted identities, plus a Geiger counter kit he ordered from a mail-order house in Scottsdale, Arizona, which he assembled and mounted to the dashboard of his burgundy Pontiac 6000.
大卫在15岁时开始他的核实验时试图建立一个育种反应堆，但是，在一条路上，他已经决心“照射任何东西”。要做到他试图建立一个“枪”，可以用中子轰击同位素。He wrote to a number of groups listed in his merit badge pamphlet — the DOE, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the American Nuclear Society, the Edison Electric Institute, and the Atomic Industrial Forum, the nuclear-power industry’s trade group — in the hope of discovering how he might obtain, from both natural and commercial sources, the radioactive raw materials he needed to build his neutron gun. By writing up to 20 letters a day and claiming to be a physics instructor at Chippewa Valley High School, David says that he obtained “tons” of information from these groups, though none proved to be more helpful than the NRC. The agency’s director of isotope production and distribution offered him tips on isolating certain radioactive elements, and imparted a piece of information that would prove to be vital to his plans: “Nothing produces neutrons as well as beryllium. “When David asked about the risks posed by such materials, the official assured “Professor Hahn” that the “real dangers are very slight, “since possession” of any radioactive materials in quantities and forms sufficient to pose any hazard is subject to Nuclear Regulatory Commission (or equivalent) licensing.”
The newspapers have published numerous diagrams, not fiery helpful to the average man, of protons and neutrons doing their stuff… But curiously tide has been said about the question that is of most urgent interest to all of us, namely, “How difficult Are these things to manufacture?”（乔治奥韦尔，您和1945年的Atom Bomb）
在政府和行业大卫中武装他的朋友们的信息键入了14个放射性同位素的来源清单。Americium-241，他从男子童子军原子能小册子中学到，可以在烟雾探测器中找到;古董发光拨号时钟中的镭-226;铀-238和铀-235在一个叫做沥青的黑色矿石中;和钍-232在燃气灯笼中。
为了获得Americium-241，David联系了烟雾探测器公司，并声称他需要大量的学校项目设备。一家公司同意为美元销售约100个破碎的探测器。大卫不确定美洲 - 241所在的地方，所以他写到伊利诺伊州奥罗拉的Brk Electronics。一个名叫Beth Weber的客户服务代表回来说她很乐意帮忙。她解释说，每个探测器只包含一小千张美的americ-241，它密封在金色矩阵中，我留在韦伯的尖端中，大卫提取了美洲组件，然后用喷孔焊接它们。
Soon, his neutron gun, crude but effective, was made and he was ready to irradiate. He could have concentrated on transforming previously non-radioactive elements, but in a decision that was both indicative of his personality and instrumental to his later attempt to build a breeder reactor, he wanted to use the gun on radioisotopes to increase the chances of making them fissionable. He thought that uranium-235, which is used in atomic weapons, would provide the “biggest reaction.” He wrote to a Czechoslovakian firm that sells uranium to commercial and university buyers. Claiming to be a professor buying materials for a nuclear research laboratory, he obtained a few samples of a black ore — either pitchblende or uranium dioxide, both of which contain small amounts of uranium- 235 and uranium-238. However, he miscalculated uranium’s solubility, and subsequently turned his attention to thorium-232, an element that has a very high melting point. Aided by his merit-badge pamphlet and his father’s chemistry books, he found a way to purify thorium to at least 9000 times the level found in nature and 170 times the level that requires NRC licensing.
接下来，大卫开始为改进的照射枪准备镭，并开始访问垃圾场和古董商店，寻找覆盖覆盖的仪表板或钟表。一旦他找到这样的物品，他就会从仪器中涂上芯片，并在丸小瓶中收集它。直到，有一天，通过克林顿乡驾驶才能探望他的女朋友，希瑟，他注意到他所注意到他通过格洛丽亚的转售精品/古董而疯狂地疯狂。The proprietor, Gloria Genette, still recalls the day when she was called at home by a store employee who said that a polite young man was anxious to buy an old table clock with a tinted green dial but wondered if she’d come down in price. She would. David bought the clock for $10. Inside he found a vial of radium paint leftbehind by a worker either accidentally or as a courtesy so that the clock’s owner could touch up the dial when it began to fade.
为了将镭浓缩，大卫在当地医院的磨损病房中保护了硫酸钡样品（那里的工作人员，因为他们从他的Merit-徽章项目中记得他）并加热直到它液化。大卫无论是否意识到它，通过处理纯净的镭，他真的是他自己的危险。尽管如此，他继续收购另一个中子发射器以更换他以前的中子枪中使用的铝。他可爱的小亚美洲枪现在是一个更强大的镭枪。大卫开始轰炸他的钍和铀粉，希望生产至少一些可变原子。他用他的地柏柜台测量了结果，但虽然钍似乎会增长更多的放射性，但铀仍然失望。
再一次，“哈恩教授”跳上行动，写信给他在NRC的老朋友讨论这个问题。NRC有答案。大卫的中子对铀的中子太“快”。
他必须使用水，氘或氚的过滤器来慢下来。水就足够了，但大卫喜欢挑战。咨询他的商业上可获得的放射源列表，他发现氚，用于提高核武器的权力的放射性物质，在发光的枪和弓景点中被发现，David及时从体育用品商店和邮件购买-Order目录。当他有足够的时候，他在铍的地带上涂上了物质，并将枪涂在铀粉上。他在几周内用他的地理柜台监测了结果，似乎粉末在白天越来越放脏。
Now 17, David hit on the idea of building a model breeder reactor.
他的蓝图是他在他父亲的大学教科书之一见到的Chequerboard饲养反应堆的示意图。无视任何安全思想，大卫从各自的铅壳中汲取了高度放射性的镭和americ，以形成他的反应器的临时“核心”。他在高尔夫庄园实验室用他的地冰柜柜台监测了他的“育种反应堆”。“它是放射性的，”他说。
最后，迄今为止，大卫迄今为止，迄今为止，佩戴临时雨披和扔掉他的衣服并在灌封棚的会议后扔掉他的鞋子，开始意识到，持续反应与否，他可以把自己置身其他人的危险。当他的盖革柜台开始从他母亲的房子里捡起辐射五扇门时，他决定他在一个“一个地方过多的放射性东西”并开始拆卸反应堆。他把钍颗粒放在母亲家里，他在母亲的房子里躲在棚子里，把山羊和amerium留在棚子里，并将其余的大部分设备包装成庞蒂亚克6000的躯干。
废物处理。如果你可以直接将废物直接倾倒进入厨房流失（不进入水槽），你还是对的。如果没有，请将其收集到塑料桶中，以在完成后抛出。(The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments)
1994年8月31日上午2:40，克林顿乡警方致电有关一名年轻人在住宅区发现的年轻人的呼吁，显然是从汽车偷走轮胎。当警察到达时，大卫告诉他们他在等着见面。令人难以置信，官员决定搜索他的车。当他们打开靴子时，他们发现了一个带有挂锁的工具箱，并用管道胶带密封。靴子还包含超过50个神秘灰色粉末，小盘和圆柱形金属物体，灯笼，汞开关，时钟面，矿石，烟花，真空管和什锦的化学品和酸的套管包裹多维套管。该警察由工具箱特别震惊，大卫警告他们是放射性的，他们担心是一个原子弹。
For reasons that are hard to fathom, Sergeant Joseph Mertes, one of the arresting officers, ordered the car, containing what he noted in Lois report to be “a potential improvised explosive device,” to be towed to police headquarters. “It probably shouldn’t have been done, but we thought the car had been used in the commission of a crime,” Police Chief Al Ernst now says sheepishly.
The police called in the Michigan State Police Bomb Squad to examine the Pontiac, and the State Department of Public Health (DPH) to supply radiological assistance. The good news, the two teams discovered, was that David’s toolbox was not an atomic bomb. The bad news was that David’s trunk did contain radioactive materials, including concentrations of thorium — “not found in nature, at least not in Michigan” — and americium. That discovery automatically triggered the Federal Radiological Emergency Response Plan, and state officials soon were embroiled in tense phone consultations with the DOE, EPA, FBI and NRC.
随着警察，大卫在很大程度上不合作。他提供了父亲的地址，但没有提到他母亲的房子或他的灌封实验室。直到感恩节那天Dave Minnaar是DPH放射专家，终于采访了大卫。大卫告诉Minnaar，他一直试图以他可以使用的形式制作钍以产生能量，并且希望他希望他的成功将帮助他赢得他的老鹰侦察状况“大卫也承认有一个后院实验室。
On November 29, state radiological experts surveyed the potting shed. They found aluminum pie dishes, jars of acids, Pyrex cups, milk crates and other materials strewn about, much of it contaminated with what subsequent official reports would call “excessive levels” of radioactive material. But although Minnaar’s troops didn’t know it at the time, they conducted their survey long after David’s mother, alerted by Ken and Kathy and petrified that the government would take her home away as a result of her son’s experiments, had ransacked the shed and discarded most of what she found, including his neutron gun, the radium, pellets of thorium that were far more radioactive than what thehealth officials found, and several quarts of radioactive powder. “The funny thing is,” David now says, “they only got the garbage, and the garbage got all the good stuff.”
After determining that no radioactive materials had leaked outside the shed, state authorities sealed it and petitioned the federal government for help. The NRC licenses nuclear plants and research facilities and deals with any nuclear accidents that take place at those sites. David’s, of course, was not an NRC-licensed operation, so it was determined that the EPA, which responds to emergencies involving lost or abandoned atomic materials, should be contacted for assistance.
环保局官员抵达高尔夫庄园1月25日1995, to conduct their own survey of the shed. Their “action memo” noted that conditions at the site “present an imminent and substantial endangerment to public health or welfare or the environment” and that there was “actual or potential exposure to nearby human populations, animals, or food chain.” A cleanup took place between July 26 and 28, 1995 at a cost of about $60,000. After the moon-suited workers dismantled the potting shed with electric saws, they loaded the remains into 39 sealed barrels placed aboard a semi-trailer bound for Envirocare, a dump facility located in the middle of the Great Salt Lake Desert. There, the remains of David’s experiments were entombed along with tons of low-level radioactive debris from the government’s atomic-bomb factories, plutonium production facilities and contaminated industrial sites. Last May, I made the 90-mile drive from Detroit to Lansing, where Dave Minnaar works in a state environmental agency. Because Patty Hahn had cleaned out the shed before Minnaar’s men arrived on the scene, he never knew that David had built neutron guns or that he had obtained radium. Nor did he understand, until I told him, that the cubes of thorium powder found by the police were building blocks for a model breeder reactor. “These are conditions that regulatory agencies never envision,” says Minnaar. “It’s presumed that the average person wouldn’t have the technology or materials required to experiment in these areas.”
“真正的危险......是在这些元素的放射性属性中。（有些人）迁移到骨髓，只能辐射干扰红细胞的产生。不到1000百万克的克可能是致命的。“(From David’s notes)
David went into a serious depression after the federal authorities shut down his laboratory. Years of painstaking work had been thrown in the garbage or buried. Students at Chippewa Valley had taken to calling him “Radioactive Boy,” and when his girlfriend, Heather, sent him Valentine’s Day balloons at his high school, they were seized by the principal, who feared they had been inflated with chemical gases that David needed to continue his experiments. In a final indignity, some area scout leaders attempted (and failed) to deny David his Eagle Scout status, saying that his extracurricular merit badge activities had endangered the community.
1995年秋季,肯大卫和凯西要求enroll in Macomb Community College. He majored in metallurgy but skipped many of his classes and spent much of the day in bed or driving in circles around their block Finally, Ken and Kathy gave him anultimatum: join the armed forces or move out of the house. They called the local recruiting office, which sent a representative to their house or called nearly every day until David finally gave in. After completing boot camp in 1997, he was stationed on the nuclear-powered USS Enterprise aircraft carrier.
Alas, David’s duties, as a lowly seaman, are of the deck-swabbing and potato peeling variety. But long after his shipmates have gone to sleep, he stays up studying topics that interest him — currently steroids, melanin, genetic codes, antioxidants, prototype reactors, amino acids, and criminal law. And it is perhaps best that he does not work on the ship’s eight reactors, for EPA scientists worry that his previous exposure to radioactivity may have greatly cut short his life. All the radioactive materials he experimented with can enter the body through ingestion, inhalation or skin contact and then deposit in the bones and organs, where they can cause a host of ailments, including cancer. Because it is so potent, the radium that David was exposed to in a small, enclosed place is most worrisome of all.
返回1995年，EPA安排了大卫在附近的费米核电站进行全面检查。大卫，害怕他可能学到的东西，拒绝了。然而，现在，他展望未来。“我想在生活中划伤，”当我向他提出他的核查研究时，他解释道。“我还有时间。我不相信我休息了五年多的弱点。“
