While he never managed to build a reactor, in August 1994, Hahn's progress attracted the attention of local police when they found concerning material in his vehicle during a stop for a separate matter.

As the experiments at home were becoming a problem and increasingly dangerous, David was encouraged by his father to join up with the Boy Scouts to provide discipline and distraction from his scientific endeavors.

He was inspired in part by reading The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments and tried to collect samples of every element in the periodic table, including the radioactive ones.

Hahn diligently amassed radioactive material by collecting small amounts from household products, such as Americium from smoke detectors, thorium from camping lantern mantles, radium from old clocks he had obtained from an antique store, and tritium from gunsights.

His "reactor" was a bored-out block of lead, and he used lithium from $1,000 worth of purchased batteries to purify the thorium ash using a Bunsen burner.

Alarmed by this, David Hahn began to dismantle his experiments, but in a chance encounter, police discovered his activities, which triggered a Federal Radiological Emergency Response Team involving the FBI and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

On June 26, 1995, the EPA, having designated Hahn's mother's property a Superfund hazardous materials cleanup site, dismantled the shed and placed its contents in steel barrels, which were later buried as low-level radioactive waste in Utah.

[1] He was then encouraged to join the military, so he enlisted in the Navy, assigned to the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Enterprise as an undesignated seaman (pay grade E-3).

[8] FBI agents then interviewed an individual (whose identity was not released) who stated that Hahn was using cocaine heavily, was not taking his prescribed medication, was paranoid about people who he claimed "had the ability to 'shock' his genitals with their minds", and had possibly been visited by prostitutes.

[9] On August 1, 2007, Hahn was charged with larceny in Clinton Township, Michigan for allegedly removing a number of smoke detectors from the halls of his apartment building.

Court records stated that his sentence would be delayed by six months while Hahn underwent medical treatment in the psychiatric unit of Macomb County Jail.

Hahn's experiments inspired others to attempt similar feats, particularly Taylor Wilson, who at age 14 became the youngest person to produce nuclear fusion.

[24] An episode of the CBS series Young Sheldon features the protagonist attempting to build a nuclear reactor by extracting americium from smoke detectors.

Episode 6 of season 6 of Mysteries at the Museum features a segment about Hahn's nuclear experiment entitled "Radioactive Boy Scout" which originally aired October 24, 2014.

[26] The song "Baby Criminal" by Swedish post-punk band Viagra Boys from their 2022 studio album Cave World is loosely based on Hahn's life.