22 April 2004 THE RADIOACTIVE BOY SCOUT: The True Story of a Boy and His Backyard Nuclear Reactor by Ken Silverstein, Random House, March 2004, ISBN: 0-375-50351-X

"Leave it better than the way you found it." That was what we were reminded each and every time we embarked on a hike or began a weekend campout.

Any mention of the Boy Scouts ignites within me a powerful assortment of emotions and vivid memories.

My grandfather Rex Partington was one of our country's first Eagle Scouts. It resulted in his being recruited by the Red Cross during World War I. He also went on to spend many fulfilling years as a Scoutmaster.

When I reached the requisite age for joining Cub Scouts, Rex persuaded me to do so. My mom became a Den mother. I can still remember going to a local department store for my first uniform, and recall such highlights as marching in Fourth of July parades, hawking boxes of candy and General Electric lightbulbs throughout the neighborhood, hatching out the infamous chickens that I spoke of in my recent review of RATS, and transforming styrofoam balls, gold spray paint, and old copies of Reader's Digest into angelic Christmas centerpieces.

The Beatles' "Nowhere Man" was topping the charts the week I turned 11 and transitioned from Cubs to Boy Scouts. Rex offered me a US Savings Bond as a reward for each advancement in rank achieved. But being the enthusiastic student that I was, it didn't take financial motivation to get me methodically learning and practicing the skills necessary to meet the requirements for Second and First Class, and then to begin conquering the merit badges and requirements that led to the upper ranks.

Scouting changed my life. If I hadn't been a Scout, I still might have celebrated the first Earth Day by helping initiate a high school Ecology Club and coordinating a clean up. If I hadn't been a Scout, I still might have run for Student Council President, and still might have gotten myself elected to the Commack Community Council, and still might have picked up all of those service and leadership awards upon graduating high school. But I doubt it.

For through Scouting, I became a Leader. I was a Patrol Leader, a graduate and teacher of the JLTC--the Junior Leadership Training Course--and an initiate of the Order of the Arrow. And through those years of working on conservation and community projects, spending weeks at Woodworth Lake Scout Camp in the Adirondaks, and hiking through some of the most beautiful parklands of the Mid-Atlantic region, environmentalism became my religion with the same intensity with which I'd embraced Jesus Christ, upon hearing such tales as The Good Samaritan and learning about His philosophy of eschewing material wealth in favor of more important things.

But my relationship with Scouting turned south when I began growing my hair like Jesus (and John Lennon) and began publicly questioning the government and vocally advocating peace. Inspired by attending antiwar rallies in Washington, DC, where I listened to the likes of Coretta Scott King, John Kerry, and Phil Ochs, I returned home to discover myself a target of most of the troop's adult leaders and many of its teen officers, whose comments scorned my appearance and attitudes. Finding myself iced out of any further leadership advancement, and just a few merit badges short of Eagle, I left Scouting with a bitterness that has forever since prompted my cynicism about the organization's motives and behavior, particularly their active and vicious intolerance of gay scouts and gay adult leaders.

Thus, in the late 1970s, when my environmentalistic zeal led to my full-time involvement in the fight to promote energy conservation and prevent construction of the Jamesport nuclear plants, I wasn't surprised to learn that the same companies who sold lightbulbs and nuclear reactors were in cahoots with the Boy Scouts and had actually written the book for an atomic energy merit badge.

Two decades after me and the Boy Scouts of America stopped seeing eye to eye, a kid with a passion for science and a history of troubled family life was persuaded by his father to join the local Scout troop. In THE RADIOACTIVE BOY SCOUT we learn that young David Hahn, who was dealing with bad grades, parent troubles, and step families had adopted a chemistry-for-the-better-things-in-life philosophy. Beginning with a long out-of-print book, The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments, which was big on bold experiments with exciting results, and small on warning labels, David worked his way through souping up model rockets and skateboards, concocting colorful fireworks and nitroglycerin, and brewing dyes that turned his hair and skin unique colors, as well as dietary supplements that undoubtedly did the same for his insides.

"His bedroom, where he carried out most of his experiments, was all but completely destroyed. The walls were badly pockmarked from a multitude of chemical explosions, and the carpet was so stained that it eventually had to be ripped out. Even the padding and plywood subflooring underneath was stained blue from spills of indole, an alkaloid derived from indigo pigment that David used to make natural-highlight shampoos...

"Another day, David decided to create chlorine gas--a version of the mass killer from World War I--following the procedure laid out in the Golden Book. Even David recognized that an accident in the shed could be dodgy, so he conducted the experiment on a card table set up at the side of the swimming pool. In the middle of the experiment, a neighbor mowing his lawn, undoubtedly concerned by the gas mask David was wearing, turned off his engine and walked over to the fence between the backyards.

" 'What's going on over there, David?' the man wanted to know. 'Do your folks know what you're doing?'

" 'It's nothing really,' David replied, ignoring the second question. 'I'm just making my own oxygen.'

"Mollified, the man gave the thumbs-up sign and returned to his lawn work."

I imagine that you are by now getting the drift that this kid--whose intermediate goal, which he was well on the way to accomplishing, was to collect a sample of every element in the periodic table--is the kind of person who would actually try to build a backyard nuclear reactor. And you are correct. Using the Boy Scouts as a cover, government and corporate sources for technical support, blind determination, and no real safeguards, David Hahn got himself in deep. By the time they caught up with him, David has succeeded in chemically concentrating the radioactive materials he'd acquired to the point where the Environmental Protection Agency needed to send in the men in the moonsuits to dismantle his work, pack it in sealed barrels, and send it for burial in a nuclear dump in the salt flats.

But the other, equally fascinating and important portions of THE RADIOACTIVE BOY SCOUT are the author's presentation of the history of the Boy Scouts, and the history of radioactive research and nuclear power. And excellent presentations they are. The snake oil salesmen of the early 1900s who sold elixirs with a radioactive punch, the architects of the Manhattan project, and the corporate executives who soaked the taxpayers for billions and billions of dollars in the name of creating a power source that would supposedly be too cheap to meter are all here...along with the industry's deadly mistakes and near-misses.

That today's younger generations will continue to face the expensive and as yet unsolved problems of cleaning up the radioactive mess that has been created over my lifetime, that there are still corporations and politicians pushing for making that mess even larger, that there was a Congressional fight just several months ago resulting in another $8 billion handout to the nuclear power industry, are the kind of issues that make THE RADIOACTIVE BOY SCOUT essential reading.

"There is but one ocean though its coves have many names; a single sea of atmosphere with no coves at all; the miracle of soil, alive and giving life, lying thin on the only earth, for which there is no spare."

--David Brower, 1912-2000

The history of the Boy Scouts that Ken Silverstein presents leaves little hope that it can be wrestled away from its conservative and corporate underpinnings. Being controlled by the same adults who favor relaxing environmental regulations, favor exploiting our national treasures for corporate gain, and oppose stronger energy conservation standards, leaves little doubt that the Boy Scouts won't be the ones in the forefront, leading the way to a safer and healthier future for the planet.

It's a shame that David Brower couldn't have created an organization for adolescents that could provide them the leadership and technical skills necessary for truly promoting that credo, "Leave it better than the way you found it."

(And, if you're wondering, I did earn my Reading merit badge before parting ways with the Boy Scouts. I don't recall all that I read for meeting the requirements, but I do remember that one of the books was Jean Craighead George's wonderful MY SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN.)

Richie Partington

http://richiespicks.com

BudNotBuddy@aol.com