So, I’ve heard many outlets refer to David Hahn’s “nuclear reactor” as a “breeder reactor” when it was more like a pile (second pic related), bevause in order to make a breeder reactor you would need a massive industrial project that would be worth the economy of an entire nation to afford and wouldn’t be possible for someone like him to hide from the authorities. But one part that confused me was the “gun” he made for the device. It was made from a Beryllium Copper strip (like a piece of film) with tritium waxed over it. First of all, I don’t see how this would work for many reasons, secondly I doubt that it even would work even if you somehow got the right amount materials in a sufficient enough quantity, because Beryllium copper is like 0.5 - 3% Beryllium and the Beryllium that nuclear facilities use is pure non-alloy Beryllium. And the fact that Tritium is a gas, not a wax. Does anyone know what the hell these media sources were talking about?
David Hahn’s “nuclear reactor”
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This is part of an entry from David Hahn's wiki entry, and the original article that outlines that Hahn's reactor was indeed an attempt at creating, not a successful creation of, a breeder reactor.
God rest Hahn, I just hope he gets to research and fuck around with nuclear reactors in heaven.
harpers.org
That's what I'd tell people if I was an authority and I wanted to stop people from trying.
It's all made up, he collected some radioactive materials and the media jumped on it calling it a "nuclear reactor!" They did the same recently with a little kid who had supposedly built a fully working fusion reactor, its all bs to sell papers/get clicks.
I agree. F for Hahn. But really though, what was that Beryllium/Tritium gun for? Ive never heard of any nuclear reactor use something similar. Did he just put the Uranium in front of the reactor and get behind the Uranium powder that he intended on turning into Plutonium and point the thing at it? That sounds weird. So he basically just took some piece of film, spread a bunch of tritium on the whole strip, picked the strip up with his bare hand (when it would’ve been safer to wear a Hazmat suit doing this since it’s Beryllium and that shit is some nasty stuff) and pointed that damn thing at the Uranium? I know that Beryllium can be extracted from Beryllium Copper by simply melting it to release the carcinogenic Beryllium dust and oxides, but I seriously don’t see how this reactor would work.
He built a neutron gun and died of radiation poisoning.
He drank himself to death IIRC.
And fentanyl was found in his system too I believe.
Turns out it's incredibly easy to do, but getting proper materials is rather tricky.
Putting it together safely might take a little more thought put into it than what Hahn displayed.
For a pile reactor, you’d need a sufficient quantity of all the materials listed, including the Americium, Radium, Barium Sulfate, Thorium, Lithium, Uranium (although you could get this naturally), and Beryllium and Tritium possibly. For the Americium alone, you’d need about $850 billion USD worth of smoke detectors for it, which is around about 190 - 200 billion smoke detectors just for one component of the radioactive core. You could get a patent and use that as your excuse of obtaining all of the ingredients (at least, theoretically), but even then you’d probably (well, most likely) need a license in order to even test your reactor, so even then you’d have to lie about the reason for it, and find something else that you can come up with that would also require all of those ingredients with an idea you invented, so that you can trick them into thinking that you’re not building a nuclear reactor.