REP 0 R T

THE R-LL\DIO-LL\CTIVE BOY SCOUT When a teenager attempts to build a By Ken Silverstein

neighborhood than a subdivision, and kind of place where, on a typical day, There is hardly a boyar a girl alive the few features that do convey subdi- the only thing lurking around the cor- who is not keenly interested in vision-a sign at the entrance saying ner is a Mister Softee ice-cream truck. finding out about things. And "We have many children but But June 26, 1995, was not a typical that's exactly what chem- none to spare. Please drive care- day. Ask Dottie Pease. As she turned istry is: FINDING OUT fully"-have a certain Back down Pinto Drive, Pease saw eleven ABOUT THINGS- men swarming across her carefully finding out what things manicured lawn. Their attention are made of and what seemed to be focused on the back yard changes they undergo. of the house next door, specifically on What things? Any thing! a large wooden potting shed that Every thing! abutted the chain- -The Golden Book of Chemistry link fence dividing Experiments her property from her neighbor's. olf Manor is the kind of Three of the men place where nothing un- had donned venti- G usual is supposed to happen, lated moon suits the kind of place where people live and were proceed- precisely because it is more than 25 ing to dismantle miles outside of Detroit and all the the potting shed complications attendant on that city. with electric saws, The kind of place where money buys stuffing the pieces a bit more land, perhaps a second bath- of wood into large room, and so reassures residents that steel drums emblazoned with ra- they're safely in the bosom of the mid- dioactive warning signs.Pease had dle class. Everyelement of Golf Manor never noticed anything out of the invokes one form of security or an- ordinary at the house next door. other, beginning with the name of the A middle-aged couple, Michael subdivision itself-taken from the 18- Polasek and Patty Hahn, lived there. hole course at its entrance-and the On some weekends, they were joined community in which it is nestled, ABOVE, LEFT TO RIGHT: BOY SCOUT by Patty's teenage son, David. As she ATOMIC ENERGY MERIT BADGE, DAVID Commerce Township. The houses and huddled with a group of nervous neigh- HAHN'S COPY OF THE GOLDEN BOOK OF trees are both old and varied enough to bors, though, Pease heard one resident CHEMISTRY EXPERIMENTS, DAVID HAHN make Golf Manor feel more like a claim to have awoken late one night to see the potting shed emitting an eerie to the Future charm. Most Golf Manor glow. "1waspretty disturbed," Pease re- Ken Silverstein's last articie for Harper's Magazine,"The Boeing Formation," appeared residents remain there until they die, calls. "I went inside and called my hus- in the May 1997 issue. He lives in Washing- and then they are replaced by young band. I said, 'Da-a-ve, there are men in ton, D.C. couples with kids. In short, it is the funny suits walking around out here.

REPORT 59 You've got to do something.'" Commission into providing him with What the men in the funny suits crucial information he needed in his You-Scientist! found was that the potting shed was attempt to build a breeder reactor, and -The Golden Book of Chemistry dangerously irradiated and that the then he obtained and purified ra- Experiments, Chapter 10 area's 40,000 residents could be at risk. dioactive elements such as. and Publicly, the men in white promised . nThe Making of theAtomic Bomb, the residents of Golf Manor that they I had seen childhood photographs Richard Rhodes notes that the had nothing to fear, and to this day of David in which he looked perfect- Ipsychologicalprofilesofpioneering neither Pease nor any of the dozen or ly normal, even angelic, with blond American physicists are remarkably so people I interviewed knows the hair and hazel-green eyes, and, as he similar. Frequently the eldest son of real reason that the Environmental grew older, gangly limbs and a peach- an emotionally remote, professional Protection Agency briefly invaded fuzz mustache. Still, when I went to man, he-almost all were men-was a their neighborhood. When asked, most meet him in Norfolk, I was anticipat- voracious reader during childhood, mumble something about a chemical ing some physical manifestation of tended to feel lonely, and was shy and spill. The truth is far more bizarre: the brilliance or obsession. An Einstein aloof from classmates. Golf Manor Superfund cleanup was or a Kaczynski. But all I saw was a David's parents, Ken and Patty provoked by the boy next door, David beefier version of the clean-cut kid in Hahn, divorced when he was a tod- Hahn, who attempted to build a nu- the pictures. David's manner was odd- dler. Ken is an automotive engineer clear breeder reactor in his mother's for General Motors, as is his second potting shed as part of a Boy Scout wife, Kathy Missig, whom he married merit-badge project. soon after the divorce. David lived with It seems remarkable that David's his father and stepmother in a small story hasn't already wended its way split-level home in suburban Clinton through all forms of journalism and Township, about thirty miles north of become the stuff of legend, but at the Detroit. Ken Hahn worked extraordi- time the EPA refused to give out narily long hours for GM. With close- David's name, and although a few lo- cropped hair and a proclivity for short- cal reporters learned it, neither he nor sleeved dress shirts, Ken radiates a any family members agreed to be in- coolness that, combined with his con- terviewed. Even the federal and state stant preoccupation, must have been officials who oversaw the cleanup confounding to a child. When asked learned only a small parr of what took about his undemonstrative nature, Ken place in the potting shed at Golf attributes it to his German ancestry. Manor because David, fearing legal Yet for all his starchiness, it was Kathy repercussions, told them almost noth- who was David's chief disciplinarian. ing about his experiments. Then in David spent weekends and holidays 1996, Jay Gourley, a correspondent with his mother and her boyfriend, with the Natural Resources News Ser- ly dispassionate, though polite, until Michael Polasek, an amiable but hard- vice in Washington, D.c., came across we began to discuss his nuclear ad- drinking retired forklift operator at a tiny newspaper item about the case ventures. Then, for five hours, light- GM. Golf Manor is demographically and contacted David Hahn. Gourley ing and grinding out cigarettes for em- similar to Clinton Township, but the later passed on his research to me, and phasis, David enthused about laboring two households could not have been I subsequently interviewed the story's in his backyard laboratory. He told more different emotionally. Patty protagonists, including David-now me how he used coffee filters and pick- Hahn committed suicide in the house a twenty-two-year-old sailor stationed le jars to handle deadly substances a few years ago, but Michael still lives in Norfolk, Virginia. such as radium and nitric acid, and there surrounded by pictures of her. I met with David in the hope of he sheepishly divulged the various ("She was a beautiful person," he says. making sense not only of his experi- cover stories and aliases he employed "She was my whole life.") He keeps ments but of him. The archetypal to obtain the radioactive materials. A five cats and a spotless household, and American suburban boy learns how shy and withdrawn teenager, David looks like a member ofSha Na Na. to hit a fadeaway jump shot, change a had confided in only a few friends Despite the fact that David wasshuf- car's oil, perform some minor carpen- about his project and never allowed fledbetween households, his early years try feats. If he's a Boy Scout he mas- anyone to witness his experiments. were seemingly ordinary. He played ters the art of starting a fire by rubbing His breeder-reactor project was a baseball and soccer, joined the Boy two sticks together, and if he's a typ- means-albeit an unorthodox one- Scouts, and spent endless hours ex- ical adolescent pyro, he transforms of escaping the trauma of adolescence. ploring with his friends. An abrupt tennis-ball cans into cannons. David "I was very emotional as a kid," he change came at the age of ten, when Hahn taught himself to build a neu- told me, "and those experiments gave Kathy's father, also an engineer for tron gun. He figured out a way to dupe me a way to get away from that. They GM, gave David The Golden Book of officials at the Nuclear Regulatory gave me some respect." Chemistry Experiments. The book

60 HARPER'S MAGAZINE / NOVEMBER 1998 promised to open doors to a brave new world-"Chemistry means the differ- ence between poverty and starvation and the abundant life," it stated with unwavering optimism-and offered in- structions on how to set up a home laboratory and conduct experiments ranging from simple evaporation and filtration to making rayon and alco- hol. David swiftly became immersed and by age twelve was digesting his fa- ther's collegechemistry textbooks with- out 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 vol- umes of the Encyclopedia Britannica. In his father's house, David set up a laboratory in his small bedroom, where the shelves are still lined with books such as Prudent Practices for Handling Hazardous Chemicals in Laborataries and Gur swan-rut]: spirit stills stand nearly j 7 [eet. The Story of AtomicEnergy. He bought They are the tallest in Scotland. beakers, Bunsen burners, test tubes, and other items commonly found in a child's chemistry set. David, though, was not conducting the typical ado- In most facets of whisky making, bigger is not necessarily lescent experiments. By fourteen, an better. Yet the height of these great copper vessels does serve age at which most boys with a pen- chant for chemistry are conducting a noble purpose: allowing only the lightest and purest of rudimentary gunpowder experiments, vapours to ascend and condense. David had fabricated nitroglycerine. David's parents admired his interest For the majority of our century-and-a-half in the whisky in science but were alarmed by the trade, one pair of stills has been sufficient to keep apace chemical spills and blasts that became with production demands. Recent years have seen their a regular event at the Hahn household. number grow to four pairs, but fear not- each still has been After David destroyed his bedroom- the walls were badly pocked, and the made to precisely the same patrern since 1843. carpet was so stained that it had to be Next time you're enjoying the yield of our labours- ripped out-Ken and Kathy banished his experiments to the basement. pronounced GlenMORangie, as if it were trying to rhyme Which wasfine with David. Science with ORANGEY-you might pause to reflect on the long allowed him to distance himself from journey that has e his parents, to create and destroythings, to break the rules, and to escape into led the spirit to something he was a success at, while your lips. sublimating a teenager's senseof failure, anger, and embarrassment into some really big explosions. David held a se- ries of after-school jobs at fast-food joints, grocery stores, and furniture Handmif/ed by ,he six/em Men oj r'in. warehouses, but work was merely a means of financing his experiments. Never an enthusiastic student and al- waysa horrificspeller,David fell behind in school. During his junior year at GLENMORANGIE Chippewa Valley High School-at a SINGLE HIGHLAND MALT SCOTCH WHISKY time when he was secretly conducting To give Glenmorangie as a gift, call Liquor by Wire, I-888-SPIRITED ([-888-774-7483). nuclear experiments in his back yard- 43% ale. by vol. (86 proof). Imported by Brown-Forman Select Brands Company, Louisville, KY ©I997 David nearly failedstate math and read- Please enjoy OUf whisky in a responsible fashion. www.glenmorangie.com THE NATIONAL BESTSELLER ing tests required for graduation variably, David would be there as (though he aced the test in science). promised, surrounded by a huge pile of "It is hard to imagine a Ken Gherardini, who taught David chemistry books. But Ken and Kathy conceptual physics, remembers him as were not assuaged,and, worried that he more gripping account an excellent pupil on the rare occa- would level their home, they prohibit- of...this centuries-long drama sions when he was interested in class- ed David from being there alone, lock- of ingenious failures, crushed work but otherwise indifferent to his ing him out when they were away,even hopes, fatal duels, and suicides." studies. "His dream in life was to col- on quick errands, and setting a time -The Wall Street Journal lect a sample of every element on the periodic table," Gherardini told me "Though Singh may not expect with a laugh during an interview at us to bring too much algebra to Chippewa Valley before his 8:20 A.M. the table, he does expect us to class. "I don't know about you, but my appreciate a good detective dream at that age was to buy a car." David's scientific preoccupation left story," -The Boston Sunday Globe less and less time for friends, though throughout much of high school he "The amazing achievement did have a girlfriend, Heather of Singh's book is that it actually Beaudette, three years his junior. makes the logic of the modern Heather says he was sweet and caring proof understandable to the (she once returned from a weeklong nonspecialist... More important, trip to Florida to find a pile of lengthy Singh shows why it is significant love letters) but not always the per- thatthis problem should have fect date. Heather's mom, Donna Bun- been solved:' nell, puts it this way:"He wasa nice kid and always presentable, but [in the - The Christian Science Monitor days before her second wedding] we had to tell him not to talk to anybody. "An excellent account of He could eat and drink but, for God's one of the most dramatic sake, don't talk to the guests about the and moving events of food's chemical composition." the century," Not even his scout troop was spared for their return so that he could get -Sir RogerPenrose, David's scientific enthusiasm. He once back in. Kathy began routinely search- The New York Times Book Review appeared at a scout meeting with a ing David's room and disposing of any bright orange face caused by an over- chemicals and equipment she found dose of canrhaxanthin, which he was hidden under the bed and deep with- NOW IN PAPERBACK . taking to test methods of artificial tan- in the closet. ning. One summer at scout , David was not deterred. One night David's fellow campers blew a hole in as Ken and Kathy were sitting in the the communal tent when they acci- living room watching TV, the house dentally ignited the stockpile of pow- wasrocked by an explosion in the base- dered magnesium he had brought to ment. There they found David lying make fireworks. Another year, David semiconscious on the floor, his eye- was expelled from camp when-while browssmoking.Unaware that red phos- most of his friends were sneaking into phorus is pyrophoric, David had been the nearby Girl Scouts' camp-he stole pounding it with a screwdriver and ig- a number of smoke detectors to disas- nited it. He was rushed to the hospital semble for parts he required for his ex- to have his eyes flushed, but even periments. "Our summer vacation was months later David had to make regu- screwed up when we got a call telling lar trips to an ophthalmologist to have us to pick David up early from camp," pieces of the plastic phosphorus con- his stepmother recalls with a sigh. tainer plucked carefully from his eyes. Up to this point the most illicit of Kathv then forbade David from ex- David's concoctions were fireworksand perirnenting in her home. So he shift- moonshine. But convinced that David's ed his base of operations to his moth- experiments and increasingly erratic er's potting shed in Golf Manor. Both behavior were signs that he was mak- Patty Hahn and Michael Polasek ad- Anchor Books ing and selling drugs, Ken and Kathy mired David for the endless hours he (1) began to spot-check the public library, spent in his new lab, but neither of Available wherever books are sold where David told them he studied. In- them had any idea what he was up to. Visit our Web site at www.anchorbooks.com Sure, they thought it was odd that David often wore a gas mask in the A GROWTI FUND WITI shed and would sometimes discard his clothing after working there until two BLUE CliP PERFORMANCE in the morning, but they chalked it T. Rowe Price Blue Chip Growth up to their own limited education. 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One thing still sticks out, though. chip companies offer the potential 25,000 David's potting-shed project had some- for sustained growth while providing thing to do with creating energy. "He'd reduced volatility compared with 20,000 say, 'One of these days we're gonna small- and mid-cap companies. 15,000 run out of oil.' He wanted to do some- The fund's strategy has proven 10,000 thing about that." effective. As the chart indicates, the 6/93 '9' fund has outperformed its Lipper Category Average since inception. Of course, past performance cannot The force hidden in the atom will be guarantee future results. No sales charges. turned into light and heat and power for everyday uses. Chemists of the fWU1"e, ,., •• n,,, Call 24 hours for your working with their brother-scientists, the INVE;TMENTIUT free investment kit physicists, will find new ways of harness- 1 including a prospectus Tlnv.~est OVVij\Vl'thCeonftiftden~.(jcee(B; ing and using the atoms of numerous el- 1·800·401·5348 ements-some of them unknown to the www.tIOweprice.com scientists of today. Do you want to share "29.75%,30.06%, and 24.92% are the fund's average annual total returns for the I-year, 3-year, and since inception in the making of that astonishing and (6130/93) periods ended 6/30198. respectively. Figures include changes in principal value, reinvested dividends, and capital promising future? gain distributions, Investment return and principal value will vary, and shares may be worth more or less at redemption than at original purchase. (Source for Lipper data: Lipper Analytical Services, Inc) -The Golden Book of Chemistry Read the prospectus carefully before investing. T. Rowe Price Investment Services, Inc, Distributor. BCG044256 Experiments

ikeMichael, few people whom David confided in understood Lwhat he was doing. Ken Hahn, who had taken chemistry courses in college, could follow some of what David told him but thought he was ex- aggerating for attention. "I never saw him turn green or glow in the dark," he says."I was probably too easy on him." 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 ! I.!.·..·GI.< ..,.• I..j 'I: discipline. As fathers are wont to do, B Ken felt the solution lay in a goal that , , . other Nuts and Fruits, too he didn't himself achieve as a child- Treat yourself, your family, your friends to the tastiest assortment of Eagle Scout. As teenagers are wont to orchard-fresh nuts and fruits. Pecans, do, David subverted that goal. Natural or Toasted and Salted are our In addition to showing "scout spirit," specialty. Also Cashews, Almonds, Walnuts - and lots more. Eagle Scouts must earn twenty-one Se aaration and divorce. Difficult ctrtdren. Your friends will love our beautiful merit badges. Eleven are mandatory, Gift Boxes; you'll appreciate our Growing old. Breast cancer. Card lac or ser.o.is such as First Aid and Citizenship in money-saving Home Boxes. Illness. Some of the biggest problems life the Community. The final ten are op- And every box is fully guaranteed. If can throw at you A psychologist can give tional; scouts can choose from dozens you aren't happy, we aren't. you the confidential help you need. Call for ofchoices ranging from American Busi- Phone: 1-800-999-2488 more information and free brcchures. ness to Woodwork. David elected to Write: JANE AND HARRY WILLSON earn a merit badge in Atomic Energy. Sunnyland Farms, Inc. PO Box 8200 Dept 2314 His scoutmaster, Joe Auito, who lives AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION Albany, GA 31706 on a rural road an hour or so north of OIVISION OF INDEPENDENT PRACTICE

Or visit us at www.apa.or g/drvlslo ns/dlva Zr Detroit and who resembles an aging built a model reactor using a juice can, Deadhead rather than the rock-ribbed coat hangers, soda straws, kitchen conservative I'd expected, sayshe's the matches, and rubber bands. By now, only boy to have done so in the histo- though, David had far grander ambi- ry of Clinton Township Troop 371. tions. As Auito's wife and troop trea- David's Atomic Energy merit-badge surer, Barbara, recalls: "The typical kid pamphlet was brazenly pro-nuclear, [working on the merit badge] would which is no surprise since it was pre- have gone to a doctor's officeand asked pared with the help of Westinghouse about the X-ray machine. Dave had Electric, the American Nuclear Soci- to go out and try to build a reactor." ety, and the Edison Electric Institute, What is a breeder reactor? This sim- a trade group of utility companies, plistic description comes from a pub- some of which run nuclear power lication that David obtained from the plants. The pamphlet judiciously states Department of Energy (DOE): "Imag- that America is a democracy and "the ine you have a car and begin a long people decide what the country will drive. When you start, you have half a do." The pamphlet goes on to suggest, tank of gas. When you return home, however, that critics of atomic energy instead of being nearly empty, your were descended from a long line of gas tank is full. A breeder reactor is naysayers and malcontents, warning like this magic car. A breeder reactor that "if America decides for or against not only generates electricity, but it nuclear power plants based on fear and also produces new fuel." misunderstanding, that is wrong. We All reactors, conventional and must first know the truth about atom- breeder, rely on a critical pile of a nat- ic energy before we can decide to use urally radioactive element-typically it or to stop it." -235 or -239-as David was awarded his Atomic En- the "fuel" for a sustained chain of re- ergy merit badge on May 10, 1991, five actions known as fission. Fission oc- months shy of his fifteenth birthday. curs when a neutron combines with To earn it he made a drawing showing the nucleus of a radioisotope, say ura- how nuclear fission occurs, visited a nium-235, transforming it into urani- hospital radiology unit to learn about um-236. This new ishighly un- the medical uses of radioisotopes, 1 and stable and immediately splits in half, forming two smaller nuclei, and re- leasing a great deal of radiant energy I Individual atoms of an element have the same number of protons in their nuclei. This (some of which is heat) and several "atomic number" detennines the element's neutrons. These neutrons are absorbed chemical properties and position in the periodic by other uranium-235 atoms to begin table. The number of neutrons within atoms the process again. of the same elements can vary, however. Known as , these variations have A breeder reactor is configured so unique physical properties because the number that a core of plutonium-239 is sur- of neutrons affects the atom's mass. Most el- rounded by a "blanket" of uranium- ements have at least two naturally occurring, 238. When the plutonium gives off stable isotopes. But isotopes of heavier ele- neutrons, they are absorbed by the ura- ments (those with more protons) are often un- stable. Called radioisotopes, and often artifi- nium-238 to become uranium-239, cially produced, these nuclei undergo some which in turn decays by emitting be- fonn of -alpha, beta, or ta rays and is transformed into neptu- gamma-to become more stable. In alpha de- nium-239. Following another stage of cay, the nucleus loses two protons and twO "radioactive decay," neptunium be- neutrons, thus transforming into another ele- ment two atomic numbers below it on the pe- comes plutonium-239, which can re- riodic table. In beta decay, either a neutron is plenish the fuel core. converted into a proton, and the atomic num- The nuclear industry used to tout ber rises, or the opposite occurs, pushing the breeders as the magical solution to the atomic number down. Gamma radiation- in which energy is emitted but no transforma- nation's energyneeds. The government tion occurs--can accompany alpha or beta had opened up two experimental breed- decay (where the atomic number falls) or can ers at a test site in Idaho by 1961. Amid occur on its own. -241, for ex- great fanfare, in 1963 Detroit Edison ample, is a radioisotope of americium. Its atomic number is 95, its atomic mass number opened the Enrico Fermi I power plant, is 241 , and it becomes neptunium- 23 7 through the nation's first and only commer- alpha decay. cially run breeder reactor. The follow- Switching Jobs Can Have An ing decade, Congress appropriated bil- lions of dollars for the Clinch River Unfortunate Effect On Your Retirement Savings. Breeder Reactor in Tennessee. Hopes ran so high that Glenn Seaborg, chair- man of the Atomic EnergyCommission during the Nixon years, predicted that breeders would be the backbone of an emerging nuclear economy and that plutonium might be "a logical con- tender to replace gold as the standard of our monetary system." Such optimism proved to be un- warranted. The first Idaho breeder had to be shut down after suffering a par- Don't Lose 40%Or More Of Your Retirement Plan To Taxes And Penalties. tial core meltdown; the second breed- Call For Your Free Information Kit Today. er generated electricity but not new T. 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Rowe Price Investment Services, Inc" Distributor, IRAR044255 tion costs would deplete much of the federal budget for energy research and development, Congress finally killed the Clinch River program. If he knew of such setbacks, David Now in paperback ... was in no way deterred by them. His inspiration came from the nuclear pi- The Heritage Crusade and oneers of the late nineteenth and ear- the Spoils of History ly twentieth centuries: Antoine Hen- ri Becquerel, the French physicist who, David Lowenthal along with Pierre and Marie Curie, re- "... [Lowenthal] is an alert and indefatigable ceived the Nobel Prize in chemistry snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. CheerfUlly in 1903 for discovering radioactivity; jaundiced, exuberantly glum, he shuffles a Frederic and Irene [eliot-Curie, who kaleidoscope of quotation and comment on received the prize in 1935 for produc- every aspect of the heritage phenomenon: books, ing the first artificial radioisotope; Sir James Chadwick, who won the Nobel magazines, newspapers. jokes, anecdotes, and Prize in physics the same year for dis- personal experience. " covering the neutron; and Enrico Fer- - New York Review of Books mi, who created the world's first sus- "Brave,piquant and impressively broad-ranging. " tainable nuclear chain reaction, a - Times Literary Supplement crucial step leading to the production of atomic energy and atomic bornbs.l "David Lowenthal knows more about the uses and abuses of the past than anyone I know ... The book isfilled with fascinating examples of claims and counterclaims made in the name of heritage... " 2 Another role model, similar to David in temperament, was the Englishman Francis - Reviews in American History William Aston. He invented the mass spec- trograph in 1920, which he used to identify "...a major literary achievement ... " more than 200 isotopes. As a child, u,-rites - Annals of the Association of American Geographers Richard Rhodes, Aston "made picric-acid bombs from soda-bottle cartridges and de- 0-521-53552-4 Paperback $17.95 signed and launched huge tissue-paper fire balloons.... " Available in bookstores or from 40 West 20th Street. New York. NY 10011-4211. AMBRIDGE Call t~lI-free 800-872-7423. C Web site: http://www.cup.org UNIVERSITY PRESS MasterCardNiSA accepted. Prices subject to change. Unlike his predecessors, however, mation that would soon prove to be vi- David did not have vast financial sup- tal to David's plans: "Nothing pro- port from the state, no laboratory save duces neutrons ... as well as berylli- for a musty potting shed, no proper um." When David asked Erb about the instruments or safety devices, and, by risks posed by such radioactive mate- far his chief impediment, no legal rials, the NRC official assured "Pro- means of obtaining radioactive mate- fessorHahn" that the "real dangers are rials. To get around this last obstacle, very slight," since possession"of any ra- David utilized a number of cover sto- dioactive materials in quantities and ries and concocted identities, plus a forms sufficient to pose any hazard is Geiger-counter kit he ordered from a subject to Nuclear Regulatory Com- mail-order house in Scottsdale, Ari- mission (or equivalent) licensing." zona, which he assembled and mount- David says the NRC also sent him ed to the dashboard of his burgundy pricing data and commercial sources Pontiac 6000. for some of the radioactive wares he The Christmas EveCookbook David hadn't hit on the idea to try wanted to purchase, ostensibly for the With Tales of Nochebuena to build a breeder reactor when he be- benefit of his eager students. "The and Chanukah gan his nuclear experiments at the age NRC gave me all the information I Ferdie Pacheco and Luisita Sevilla Pacheco of fifteen, but in a step down that path, needed," he later recalled. "All I had "[Pacheco] can make you laugh Ollt loud in he was already determined to "irradi- to do was go out and get the materials." a room alone."- Washington Post ate anything" he could. To do that he •A beautifully illustrated collection of nearly had to build a "gun" that could bom- 200 recipes and 20 holiday stories. Cloth, $19.95 bard isotopes with neutrons. David The newspapers have published nu- wrote to a number of groups listed in merous diagrams, not very helpful to the The Gift by H.D. his merit-badge pamphlet-the DOE, average man, of protons and neutrons doing their stuff. ... But curiously little The Complete Text the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Edited and Annotated by Jane Augustine (NRC), the American Nuclear Soci- has been said, at any rate print, about "More than 50 years after its composition in ety, the Edison Electric Institute, and the question that is of most urgent inter- a London menaced by German air raids .... the Atomic Industrial Forum, the nu- est to aUof us, namely, "How difficult are 'The Gift is a revelation of H.D.'s courage as clear-power industry's trade group- these things to manufacture?" an artist."-Robert Spoo, University of Tulsa in hopes of discovering how he might -George Orwell, "You and the Cloth, $49.95 obtain, from both natural and com- Atom Bomb," 1945 mercial sources, the radioactive raw Fleeing Castro materials he needed to build his neu- rmed with information from Operation Pedro Pan and the tron gun and experiment with it. By his friends in government and Cuban Children's Program writing up to twenty letters a day and A industry, David typed up a list Victor Andres Triay claiming to be a physics instructor at of sources for fourteen radioactive iso- A stirring account of the covert effort to Chippewa Valley High School, David topes.Americium-241, he learned from smuggle Cuban children into the United sayshe obtained "tons" of information the Boy Scour atomic-energy booklet, States in the aftermath of Fidel Castro's rise to power. Cloth, $49.95 from those and other groups, though could be found in smoke detectors; ra- some of it was of only marginal value. dium-226, in antique luminous dial The Enduring Seminoles The American Nuclear Society sent clocks; uranium-238 and minute quan- tities of uranium-235, in a black ore From Alligator Wrestling David a teacher's guide called "Goin' Fission,"which featured an Albert Ein- called pitchblende; and thorium-232, to Ecotourism stein cartoon character: "I'm Albert. in Coleman-style gas lanterns. Patsy West "Anexcellent, innovative history and ethnog- Und today, ve are gonna go fission. To obtain americium- 241, David raphy of the most important and most typi- No, ve don't need any smelly bait and contacted smoke-detector companies cal Florida Seminole economic activity of the der won't be any fish to clean. I mean and claimed that he needed a large twentieth century."-William C. Sturtevant, fission, not fishin'." number of the devices for a school National Museum of Natural History, Other organizations proved to be project. One company agreed to sell Smithsonian Institution far more helpful, and none more than him about a hundred broken detec- Cloth, $24.95 the NRC. Again posing as a physics tors for a dollar apiece. (He also tried to "collect" detectors while at scout Mention this ad for 20% off! teacher, David managed to engage the agency's director of isotope produc- camp.) David wasn't sure where the Source Code: ADH8 tion and distribution, Donald Erb, in americium-241 was located, so he Order with VISA or M/C toll free: 1-800-226-3822 a scientific discussion by mail. Erb of- wrote to BRK Electronics in Aurora, fered David tips on isolating certain Illinois. A customer-service represen- radioactive elements, provided a list tative named Beth Weber wrote back Happy Holidays from of isotopes that can sustain a chain re- to say she'd be happy to help out with action, and imparted a piece of infer- "your report." She explained that each UNIVERSITY PRESS OF FLORIDA Gainesville, Tallahassee, Tampa, Boca Raton, Pensacola, Orlando, Miami, Jacksonville HIGH INCOME detector contains only a tiny amount of americium- 241, which is sealed in a gold matrix "to make sure that corro- WITH A MODERATELY sion does not break it down and re- lease it." Thanks to Weber's tip, David AGGRESSIVE APPROACH extracted the americium components and then welded them together with a T. Rowe Price Corporate Income Fund. This fund blowtorch. can help investors seek a higher level of income than As it decays, amertcium-Z'[l emits high-quality bond funds offer while taking less risk alpha rays composed of protons and than with an investment solely in "junk" bonds. It neutrons. David put the lump of ameri- invests primarily in corporate investment- bonds, cium inside a hollow block of with with up to one-third of the fund's assets invested in a tiny hole pricked in one side so that high-yield "junk" bonds. alpha rays would stream out. In front Remember, the riskier securities in the fund will increase its poten- of the lead block he placed a sheet of tial for volatility, and the share price and yield will fluctuate with aluminum. Aluminum atoms absorb interest rate and market changes. Minimum investment is $2,500 alpha rays and in the process kick out ($1,000 for IRAs). No sales charges. neutrons. Since neutrons have no charge, and thus cannot be measured Call 24 hours for your by a Geiger counter, David had no free investment kit way of knowing whether the gun was including a prospectus working until he recalled that paraffin 1·800·401·5342 throws off protons when hit by neu- www.troweprice.com trons. David aimed the apparatus at 8 8 some paraffin, and his Geiger counter 12.3S '0 and 9.03 '8 are the I-yearandsinceinception(J 0/3 )/95) averageannualtotalreturns,respectively, fortheperiodsended6/30/98. Thesefiguresincludechangesinprincipalvalue,reinvesteddividends,andcapitalgaindistribu- registered what he assumed was a pro- tions.Pastandpresentexpenselimitationshaveincreasedthefund'syieldandtotalreturn.Investmentreturnandprincipalvalue ton stream. His neutron gun, crude willvary,andsharesmaybeworthmoreor lessat redemptionthanat originalpurchase.Readtheprospectuscarefullybefore investin.1. RowePriceInvestmentServices,lnc.,Distributor. CIF044254 but effective, was ready. With neutron gun in hand, David was ready to irradiate. He could have concentrated on transforming previ- ously nonradioactive elements, but in a decision that was both indicative of HEAR THE RADIO THAT WOKE his personality and instrumental to his Up later attempt to build a breeder reac- AN ENTIRE INDUSTRY. tor, he wanted to use the gun on ra- dioisotopes to increase the chances of making them fissionable. He thought The sound of card-sized remote that uranium-235, which is used in most tabletop control, six AM atomic weapons, would provide the radios leaves much and six FM station "biggest reaction." He scoured hun- to be desired. But presets, and more. It dreds of miles of upper Michigan in now the rich-sounding Bose" fits almost anywhere and is his Pontiac looking for "hot rocks" Wave® radio changes all that. available directly from Bose with his Geiger counter, but all he could find was a quarter trunkload of We think it's the best-sounding radio for $349. Call today to learn more about pitchblende on the shores of Lake you can buy, and audio critics agree. Like our six-month, interest-free payment Huron. Deciding to pursue a more bu- Popular Science, which gave it their "Best plan, 100% satisfaction guarantee, and reaucratic approach, he wrote to a of What's New" award. And Radio World, in-home trial. Czechoslovakian firm that sells urani- which called the sound "simply amazing:' And hear for yourself what Wired called um to commercial and university buy- The Wave radio includes a credit the "clean, sweet sound"of the Wave radio. ers, whose name was provided, he told me, by the NRC. Claiming to be a Call today, 1-800-681-BOSE, ext. R8753. professor buying materials for a nu- For information on all our products: www.bose.com/r8753 clear-research laboratory, he obtained a few samples of a black ore-either Please specify color choice: 0 Imperial White :J Graphite Gray For free shipping, pitchblende or uranium dioxide, both MrJMrs./Ms. order by of which contain small amounts of ura- Name [Please Print) November 30, 1998. nium-235 and uranium-238. Address City State Zip David pulverized the ores with a Daytime Telephone Evening Telephone -B05£® hammer, thinking that he could then Mail to: Bose® Corporation, Dept. CDD-R8753, The Mountain, Framingham, MA 01701-9168. Better sound through research.

©1998 BoseCorporation. Covered by patent rights issued and/or pending. Installrner.t payment plan and free outbound shipping offer not to be combined with any other offer. Installment payment plan available on credit card orders only. Price does not include applicable sales tax Price ar.d/or payment plan subject to change without notice. Frank Beacham, Radio World, 12/93. Wired,6/94. use nitric acid to isolate uranium. Un- and 170 times the level that requires dropped by the boutique later that able to find a commercial source for NRC licensing. night to leave a note for Gloria, telling nitric acid-probably because it is At this point, David could have used her that if she received another "lu- used in the manufacture of explosives his americium neutron gun to trans- minus [sic] clock" to contact him im- and thus is tightly controlled-David form thorium-232 into fissionable ura- mediately, "I will pay any some [sic)of made his own by heating saltpeter nium-233. But the americium he had money to obtain one." and sodium bisulfate, then bubbling was not capable of producing enough To concentrate the radium, David the gas that was released through a neutrons, so he began preparing radi- secured a sample of barium sulfate container, of water, producing nitric um for an improved irradiating gun. from the X-ray ward at a local hospi- acid. He then mixed the acid with Radium was used in paint that ren- tal (staff there handed over the sub- the powdered ore and boiled it, end- dered luminescent the faces of clocks stance because they remembered him ing up with something that "looked and automobile and airplane instru- from his merit-badge project) and like a dirty milk shake." Next he ment panels until the late 1960s,when heated it until it liquefied. After mix- poured the "milk shake" through a it was discovered that many clock ing the barium sulfate with the radi- coffee filter, hoping that the urani- painters, who routinely licked their um paint chips, he strained the brew um would pass through the filter. But brushes to make a fine point, died of through a coffee filter into a beaker David miscalculated uranium's solu- that began to glow. This time, David bility, and whatever amount was pre- had judged the solubility of the two sent was trapped in the filter, mak- substances correctly; the radium so- ing it difficult to purify further. lution passed through to the beaker. Frustrated at his inability to isolate He then dehydrated the solution into sufficient supplies of uranium, David crystalline salts, which he could pack turned his attention to thorium-232, into the cavity of another lead block which when bombarded with neutrons to build a new gun. produces uranium-233, a man-made Whether David fully realized it or fissionable element (and, although he not, by handling purified radium he might not have known it then, one was truly putting himself in danger. that can be substituted for plutonium Nevertheless, he now proceeded to ac- in breeder reactors). Discoveredin 1828 quire another neutron emitter to re- and named after the Norse god Thor, place the aluminum used in his previ- thorium has a very high melting point, ous neutron gun. Faithful to Erb's and is thus used in the manufacture of instructions, he secured a strip of beryl- airplane engine parts that reach ex- lium (which is a much richer source of tremelyhigh temperatures. David knew neutrons than aluminum) from the from his merit-badge pamphlet that chemistry department at Macomb the "mantle" used in commercial gas Community College-a friend who lanterns-the part that looks like a cancer. David began visiting junkyards attended the school swiped it for doll's stocking and conducts the and antiques stores in search of radium- him-and placed it in front of the lead flame-is coated with a compound con- coated dashboard panels or clocks. block that held the radium. His cute taining thorium-232. He bought thou- Once he found such an item, he'd chip little americium gun was now a more sands oflantern mantles from surplus paint from the instruments and col- powerful radium gun. David began to stores and, using the blowtorch, re- lect it in pill vials.It wasslowgoing un- bombard his thorium and uranium duced them into a pile of ash. til one day, driving through Clinton powders in the hopes of producing at David still had to isolate the thori- Township to visit his girlfriend, least some fissionable atoms. He mea- um-232 from the ash. Fortunately, he Heather, he noticed that his Geiger sured the results with his Geiger remembered reading in one of his dad's counter went wild ashe passedGloria's counter, but while the thorium seemed chemistry books that lithium is prone Resale Boutique! Antique. The pro- to grow more radioactive, the uranium to binding with oxygen-meaning, in prietor, Gloria Genette, still recalls remained a disappointment. this context, that it would rob thorium the day when she was called at home Once again, "ProfessorHahn" sprang dioxide of its oxygen content and leave by a store employee who said that a into action, writing his old friend Erb a cleaner form of thorium. David pur- polite young man was anxious to buy at the NRC to discuss the problem. chased $1,000 worth of lithium bat- an old table clock with a tinted green The NRC had the answer.David's neu- teries and extracted the element by dial but wondered if she'd come down trons were too "fast" for the uranium} cutting the batteries in half with a pair in price. She would. David bought the of wire cutters. He placed the lithium clock for $10. Inside he discovered a and thorium dioxide together in a ball vial of radium paint left behind by a 3 Manhattan Project scientists discovered that of aluminum foil and heated the ball worker either accidentally or as a cour- some neutrons can move at speeds of about 17 million miles per hour. If they are slowed down with a Bunsen burner. Eureka! David's tesy so that the clock's owner could or "moderated," to about 5 ,000 miles per method purified thorium to at least touch up the dial when it began to hour, they have a better chance of being ab- 9,000 times the level found in nature fade. David was so overjoyed that he sorbed by another arom.

68 HARPER'S MAGAZINE! NOVEMBER 1998 He would have to slow them down us- his Geiger counter. "It wasradioactive ing a filter of water, deuterium, or tri- as heck," he says. "The level of radia- tium. Water would have sufficed, but tion after a few weeks was far greater David likes a challenge. Consulting his than it was at the time of assembly. I list of commercially available radioac- know I transformed some radioactive tive sources,he discovered that , materials. Even though there was no a radioactive material used to boost the critical pile, I know that some of the re- power of nuclear weapons, is found in actions that go on in a breeder reactor glow-in-the-dark gun and bow sights, went on to a minute extent." which David promptly bought from Finally, David, ~hose safety pre- sporting-goods stores and mail-order cautions had thus far consisted of catalogues. He removed the tritium wearing a makeshift lead poncho and contained in a waxy substance inside throwing away his clothes and chang- the sights, and then, using a variety of ing his shoes following a session in pseudonyms, returned the sights to the the potting shed, began to realize that, store or manufacturer for repair--each sustained reaction or not, he could be time collecting another tiny quantity of putting himself and others in danger. tritium. When he had enough, David (One tip-off was when the radiation smeared the waxy substance over the was detectable through concrete.) [im beryllium strip and targeted the gun at Miller, a nuclear-savvy high-school uranium powder. He carefully moni- friend in whom David had confided, tored the results with his Geiger warned him that real reactots use con- counter over several weeks, and it ap- trol rods to regulate nuclear reactions. peared that the powder was growing Miller recommended cobalt, which more radioactive by the day. absorbs neutrons but does not itself Now seventeen, David hit on the become fissionable. "Reactors get hot, idea of building a model breeder re- it's just a fact," Miller, a nervous, skin- actor. He knew that without a critical ny twenty-two-year-old, said during pile of at least thirty pounds of en- an interview at a Burger King in Clin- riched uranium he had no chance of ton Township where he worked as a initiating a sustained chain reaction, cook. David purchased a set of cobalt but he was determined to get as far as drill bits at a local hardware store and he could by trying to get his various ra- inserted them between the thorium dioisotopes to interact with one an- and uranium cubes. But the cobalt other. That way, he now says, "no wasn't sufficient. When his Geiger matter whafhappened there would counter began picking up radiation be something changing into some- five doors down from his mom's house, thing-some kind of action going on David decided that he had "too much there." His blueprint was a schemat- radioactive stuff in one place" and be- ic of a checkerboard breeder reactor gan to disassemble the reactor. He' he'd seen in one of his father's col- placed the thorium pellets in a shoe- lege textbooks. Ignoring any thought box that he hid in his mother's house, of safety, David took the highly ra- left the radium and americium in the dioactive radium and americium out of shed, and packed most of the rest of his their respective lead casings and, after equipment into the trunk of the Pon- another round of filingand pulverizing, tiac 6000. mixed those isotopes with beryllium and aluminum shavings, all of which he wrapped in aluminum foil. What \VASTE DISPOSAL. If you can were once the neutron sources for his dump your waste directly into the kitchen guns became a makeshift "core" for drain (NOT into the sink), you are all his reactor. He surrounded this ra- right. If not, collect it in a plastic pail to dioactive ball with a "blanket" com- be thrown out when you're finished. posed of tiny foil-wrapped cubes of -The Golden Book of thorium ash and uranium powder, Chemistry Experiments which were stacked in an alternating pattern with carbon cubes and tenu- t 2:40 A.M. on August 31, ously held together with duct tape. 1994, the Clinton Township David monitored his "breeder reac- A police responded to a call con- tor" at the Golf Manor laboratory with cerning a young man who had been spotted in a residential neighborhood, energy and that he hoped "his successes help. The NRC licenses nuclear plants apparently stealing tires from a car. would help him earn his Eagle Scout and research facilities and deals with When the police arrived, David told status." David also finally admitted to any nuclear accidents that take place them he was waiting to meet a friend. having a backyard laboratory. at those sites. David, of course, was Unconvinced, officers decided to search his car. When they opened the trunk they discovered a toolbox shut with a padlock and sealed with duct tape for good measure. The trunk also contained over fiftyfoil-wrapped cubes of mysterious gray powder, small disks and cylindrical metal objects, lantern mantles, mercury switches, a clock face, ores, fireworks, vacuum tubes, and assorted chemicals and acids. The police were especially alarmed by the toolbox, which David warned them was radioactive and which they feared was an atomic bomb. For reasons that are hard to fathom, Sergeant Joseph Mertes, one of the arresting officers, ordered a car con- taining what he noted in his report was "a potential improvised explo- sive device" to be towed to police headquarters. "It probably shouldn't THE EPA CLEANS OUT DAVID'S SHED have been done, but we thought that the car had been used in the com- On November 29, state radiological not an NRC-licensed operation, so it mission of a crime," Police Chief Al experts surveyed the potting shed. was determined that the EPA, which Ernst now says sheepishly. "When I They found aluminum pie pans, jars of responds to emergencies involving lost came in at 6:30 in the morning it was acids, Pyrex cups, milk crates, and oth- or abandoned atomic materials, should already there." er materials strewn about, much of it be contacted for assistance. In a memo The police called in the Michigan contaminated with what subsequent to the EPA's Emergency Response and State Police Bomb Squad to examine official reports would call "excessive Enforcement Branch, the Department the Pontiac and the State Department levels" of radioactive material, espe- of Public Health noted that the mate- of Public Health (DPH) to supply ra- cially americium-241 and thorium- rials discovered in David's lab were diological assistance. The good news, 232. How high? A vegetable can, for regulated under the Federal Atomic the two teams discovered, was that example, registered at 50,000 counts Energy Act and that the "extent of David's toolbox was not an atomic per minute-about 1,000 times high- the radioactive material contamina- bomb. The bad news was that David's er than normal levels of background tion within a private citizen's proper- trunk did contain radioactive materi- radiation. But although Minnaar's ty beg for a controlled remediation als, including concentrations of thori- troops didn't know it at the time, they that is beyond our authority or re- um-"not found in nature, at least not conducted their survey long after sources to oversee." in Michigan"-and americium. That David's mother, alerted by Ken and EPA officials arrived in Golf discovery automatically triggered the Kathy and petrified that the govern- Manor on January 25, 1995-five Federal Radiological Emergency Re- ment would take her home away as a months after David had been sponse Plan, and state officials soon result of her son's experiments, had stopped by the police-to conduct were embroiled in tense phone con- ransacked the shed and discarded most their own survey of the shed. Their sultations with the DOE, EPA, FBI, of what she found, including his neu- "action memo" noted that condi- and NRC. tron gun, the radium, pellets of thori- tions at the site "present an immi- With the police, David was largely um that were far more radioactive nent and substantial endangerment uncooperative and taciturn. He pro- than what the health officials found, to public health or welfare or the vided his father's address but didn't and several quarts of radioactive pow- environment," and that there was mention his mother's house or his pot- der. "The funny thing is," David now "actual or potential to ting-shed laboratory. It wasn't until says, "they only got the garbage, and nearby human populations, animals, Thanksgiving Day that Dave Minnaar, the garbage got all the good stuff." or food chain .... " The memo fur- a DPH radiological expert, finally in- After determining that no radioac- ther stated that adverse conditions terviewed David. David told Minnaar tive materials had leaked outside the such as heavy wind, rain, or fire that he had been trying to make tho- shed, state authorities sealed it and pe- could cause the "contaminants to rium in a form he could use to produce titioned the federal government for migrate or be released."

70 HARPER'S MAGAZINE I NOVEMBER 1998 Photograph by U .s. EPA, Region 5 I A Superfund cleanup took place be- THE MOST INFLUENTIAL PIANIST tween June 26 and 28 at a cost of about HONORS THE MOST IMPORTANT COMPOSER $60,000. After the moon-suited work- , " I ' ers dismantled the potting shed with , >1 f!-'::' 1 I I A ~~If' electric saws, they loaded the remains into thirty-nine sealed barrels placed aboard a semitrailer bound for Envi- rocare, a dump facility located in the middle of the Great Salt Lake Desert. There, the remains of David's experi- ments were entombed along with tons HER B I of low-level radioactive debris from GERSHWIN'S W R L 0 the government's atomic-bomb facto- ries, plutonium-production facilities, The indelible melodies of George Gershwin took the vernacular of featuring jazz, pop, and classical music to a higher, more universal level. Katilleen Battle and contaminated industrial sites. Ac- Herbie Hancock, a genre-crossing icon in his own right, brings Chick Corea cording to the officialassessment,there together stars from diverse walks of life in an innovative, beautiful Joni Mitchel! was no noticeable damage to flora or tribute record. Celebrating the centennial year of Gershwin's birth, Wayne Shorter fauna in the back yard in Golf Manor, Gershwin's World is an extraordinary musical and historic event. Stevie Wonder but 40,000 nearby residents could have been put at risk during David's years of "We worked very hard to personalize the Gershwin material while plus staying true to the spirit of jazz. Our intentions were to reach experimentation due to the dangers Orpheus Chamber inside to the core of each piece in search of the composer's Orchestra posed by the release of radioactive dust and many others onginal impulses, and to take those elements and recompose and radiation. and reconstruct them in our own way." Last May, I made the 90-mile drive - Herbie Hancock from Detroit to Lansing, where Dave Minnaar works in a dreary building that houses several state environ- mental agencies. Because Patty Hahn available at liFI 'irficOME INSJDE.I had cleaned out the shed before Min- REPRESENTI.TIOIt David Passick Entertainment naar's men arrived on the scene, he never knew that David had built neu- tron guns or that he had obtained ra- THE BOSTON UNIVERSITY dium. Nor did he understand, until I GRADUATE CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM told him, that the cubes of thorium powder found by police at the time of ur program, one of the oldest and most prestigious in the nation, is small (no more than a David's arrest were the building blocks Odozen students admitted in any genre, with all workshops limited to twelve members); very for a model breeder reactor. "These intensive (the master's degree is ordinarily awarded after the academic year of eight courses); and highly com- are conditions that regulatory agencies petitive (normally sixteen students apply for each spot in fiction and poetry). We are best known for the qual- ity of our graduate workshops. All these are held in the same small room, which allows through its dusty never envision," says Minnaar. "It's windows a glimpse of the Charles River. Perhaps the most remarkable such workshop occurred when Sylvia simply presumed that the average per- Plath, Anne Sexton, George Starbuck, and Kathleen Spivack gathered for instruction by Robert Lowell- son wouldn't have the technology or gathered, by the way, less often in that little room than at the Ritz Bar. These days, the poetry workshops materials required to experiment in are run by our permanent faculty of Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky and Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott, who also conducts a playwriting workshop; and those in fiction are led by Leslie Epstein, Ralph Lombreglia and these areas." Susanna Kaysen. Of course our students have abont them the resources of a great university. That means they often take courses with a superb faculty in literature that includes the poets Geoffrey Hill and Rosanna Warren, the critics Roger Shattuck and Christopher Ricks, and Boston University's two other Nobel Prize winners, "The real danger . . . lies in the ra- Saul Bellow and Elie Weisel. It is difficult to know bow best to measure a student's success, or the worth of a program to a writer; we can say that our graduates in each genre have accomplished a good deal. Over dioactive properties of these elements. the last few years, for instance, our playwrights have won the ABC National Playwriting Prize,the Charles [Some] migrate to the bone marrow, where MacArthur Award for Comedy, the Theater of Louisville Best One-Act Play Award, first prize in both the their radiation interferes with the produc- 21st Century Playwrights' Festival and the Baltimore Playwrights' Festival, and another of our playwrights tion of red blood cells. Less than one-mil- had a full production with the Naked Angels in New York. Quite recently our graduates in poetry have won lionth of a gram can be fataL" the $30,000 Whiting Award, the Barnard New Women Poets Series, a grant from the NEA, the Norma Far- ber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America; there have been three winners in three years of -from David's notes the Discovery/The Nation Award, and two winners of the National Poetry Series. In fiction, our students have also won the Whiting Award, along with an inordinate share of the nationwide Henfield Awards. In 1996 avid went into a serious de- Ha Jin won the PENlHemingway and Flannery O'Connor awards for stories written in our workshops, and pression after the federal au- two holders of our MA appeared on Granta's list of outstanding young writers. Not a year goes by without a graduate of our program bringing out a book with a major publisher, and some, like Sue Miller and Dthorities shut down his labo- Arthur Golden (Memoirs of a Geisha), spend a good deal of time on best seller lists. Over the last decade we ratory. Years of painstaking work had have placed more than a dozen of our graduates in tenure-track positions in major American universities. been thrown in the garbage or buried We make, of course, no such assurances. Our only promise to those who join us is of a fair amount of time in that river-view room, time shared with other writers in a common, most difficult pursuit: the perfection beneath the sands ofUtah. Students at of one's craft. Chippewa Valley had taken to calling For more information about the program, visiting writers, and financial aid (our teaching fellows conduct undergraduate creative writing classes), write to Director, Creative Writing Program, Boston University, 236 Bay State Road, Boston, MA 02215. Boston University is an equal opportunity institution. IN SEARCH OF GREATER MEANING him "Radioactive Boy," and when his FOR THE HOLIDAYS? girlfriend, Heather, sent David Valen- tine's balloons at his high school, they were seized by the principal, who ap- ----7be----- parently feared they had been inflated with chemical gases David needed to t,.AMERJGyAN HERITAGE® continue his experiments. In a final indignity, some area scout leaders at- tempted (and failed) to deny David i)

t.. tJ1i~J')..f '~'tiF/...'felfllllt"!,l' '4.; ::11 ~w T;l ;' ;~J cJ' 'F},,_. his Eagle Scout status, saying that his ,0· •••• ·t..·' 'f .i" Of" extracurricular merit-badge activities had endangered the community. :GUAGE In the fall of 1995, Ken and Kathy 'k. "< &, demanded that David enroll in Ma- comb Community College. He ma- jored in metallurgy but skipped many of his classesand spent much of the day 'The ~E AMERICAN HERITAGE® DICTIONARY, Third in bed or driving in circles around their AMERICAN block. Finally, Ken and Kathy gave Edition, adds new meaning to "the perfect gift" by HERITAGE" him an ultimatum: Join the armed offering a wealth of language, art, and history. dic-tion-ar-y forces or move out of the house. They With more than 350,000 meanings and entries, ~l THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE called the local recruiting office,which nearly 4,000 pieces of art, extensive usage notes, sent a representative to their house or and more etymological information than any com- called nearly every day until David fi- parable dictionary, THE AMERICAN HERITAGE® nally gave in. After completing boot camp last year, he was stationed on DICTIONARyis a fresh and engaging resource for the curious reader. the nuclear-powered USS Enterprise aircraft carrier. At Bookstores Everywhere ~ HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY Alas, David's duties, as a lowly sea- man, are of the deck-swabbing and potato-peeling variety. But long after

SOLUTION TO THE KR KKt KB K 0 OB OKl OR his shipmates have gone to sleep,David OCTOBER PUZZLE stays up studying topics that interest him-currently steroids, melanin, ge- netic codes, antioxidants, prototype reactors, amino acids, and criminal law. And it isperhaps best that he does not NOTES FOR "CHESSMEN-II": work on the ship's eight reactors, for EPA scientists worry that his previous Anagrams are indicated with an asterisk (*) . exposure to radioactivity may have TOP ROW: p(h)easant. greatly cut short his life. All the ra- BOTTOM ROW: D.(own-war)D. dioactive materials he experimented KING'S ROOK: prince (homonym); ere (hidden); epee (ho- with can enter the body through in- mophone); (t lendls): d-osed". KING'S KNIGHT: (r)heft; gestion, inhalation, or skin contact tier (two mngs.), r-in-G; Gore (two rnngs.); eddy (hidden); year (ear[l]y*); (b)rave; e.g.vos (rev.): S.(he)S.; Soho*. and then deposit in the bones and or- KING'S BISHOP: (b)eagle; E-as-Y; yam (rev); me-ow. gans, where they can cause a host of ail- KING: ALAN (King); ELLERY (Queen); JOEY (Bishop); ments, including cancer. Because it is WAYNE (Knight); VERNON (Castle). QUEEN: sank (ho- so potent, the radium that David was mophone); killing (two mngs.): gorgons*; S-N(O)-W. QUEEN'S BISHOP: A-LP; p-I-u-s (last letters); sewer (pun); exposed to in a relatively small, en- Rig-a. QUEEN'S KNIGHT: nine (homophone); el(U)I; KR KKt KB closed space is most worrisome of all. Lo(ui lse: ESP(y); yaks (two mngs.): s-curfs); (squir)rels; slur (two mngs.). Back in 1995, the EPA arranged for tank(a-rd)s; s-pewts); w-ave; (f)eels; sod (rev.) David to undergo a full examination at SOLUTION TO OCTOBER DOUBLE ACROSTIC (NO. 189). KENNETH A. BROWN: FOUR COR- the nearby Fermi nuclear power plant. NERS. High cliffs ... rise ... from the highway's edge ... the same brightly colored rocks that ... David, fearful of what he might learn, form a backdrop for Ghost Ranch, where Georgia O'Keeffe came to live and paint, creating her stark and surreal images of the Southwest. refused. Now, though, he's looking ahead. "I wanted to make a scratch in CONTEST RULES: Send the quotation, the name of the author, and the title of the work, together with your name and address, to Double Acrostic No. 190, Harper's Magazine, 666 Broadway, New life,"he explains when I ask him about York, N.Y. 10012. If you already subscribe to Harper's, please include a copy of your latest mailing his early years ofnuclear research. "I've label. Entries must be received by November 9. Senders of the first three correct solutions opened at still got time. I don't believe I took random will receive one-year subscriptions to Harper's Magazine. The solution will be printed in the more than five years off of my life." _ December issue. Winners of the September Double Acrostic (No. 188) are Marjorie Holstege, Port Angeles, Washington; Sam Cargill, Greenville, South Carolina; and Paul Abrahams, Deerfield, Massachusetts.