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Nuclear reactors are not pieces of equipment you come across everyday.

They are designed to produce thermal energy that can be used for its own sake or converted

into mechanical energy, and most of the time into electrical energy.

They work by maintaining a chain reaction producing a steady flow of neutrons, generated

by the fission of heavy nuclei, the most common of which is uranium-235 that produces the

thermal heat.

There are many different types of nuclear power reactors, but you certainly can't

shop for one online.

However, there was one kid who was determined to get his hands on a reactor for himself.

Welcome to this episode of The Infographics Show: The Boy Scout Who Tried To Build a Nuclear

Reactor.

Imagine opening your bedroom curtains one day and looking out of your window to see

a strange green glow resonating from your neighbor's shed, and then noticing government

trucks being loaded with barrels marked radioactive by men dressed in hazmat suits outside your

home.

You might think you had been transported onto the set of the latest Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster.

But in 1995, for the residents of Golf Manor, Michigan, this was no made for tv drama.

A young teenage boy had built a nuclear breeder reactor in his mother's potting shed, a crazy

idea he thought up while working on his Atomic Energy merit badge in an attempt to earn Eagle

Scout status.

The boy's name was David Charles Hahn who, not surprisingly, is sometimes called the

Radioactive Boy Scout or the Nuclear Boy Scout.

So how did teenager David Hahn go from being an everyday goofy schoolboy to nuclear reactor

developer?

Ken Silverstein is an American journalist who used to be the Washington editor and blogger

at Harper's Magazine.

He met David in the late 90's to try and figure out exactly what happened, by hearing

the story from the proverbial horse's mouth.

He described David as oddly dispassionate, though polite, until they began to discuss

his nuclear adventures.

Then, for five hours, David became enthused as he talked about working in his backyard

laboratory.

He explained to Silverstein that he used coffee filters and pickle jars to handle deadly substances

such as radium and nitric acid whilst working on developing his reactor.

David was a shy teenager, and so had only confided in a few friends about his crazy

and ambitious project, but never allowed anyone to witness his experiments.

He said to Silverstein "I was very emotional as a kid and those experiments gave me a way

to get away from that.

They gave me some respect."

As David became more and more preoccupied with science, he had less and less time for

friends, though during his high school years, he did have a girlfriend, Heather Beaudette.

Heather was three years younger than David, and she says he was sweet and caring, but

not always the perfect date.

Heather's mom described David this way: "He was a nice kid and always presentable,

but we had to tell him not to talk to anybody.

He could eat and drink but, for God's sake, don't talk to the guests about the food's

chemical composition."

But how did David advance from being this somewhat geeky experimenting student, to a

boy with a reactor?

David was a boy scout, and Eagle Scouts must earn 21 merit badges.

11 are mandatory, such as First Aid and Citizenship in the Community.

The final 10 are optional, and scouts can choose from dozens of choices ranging from

American Business to Woodwork.

Of course, David chose to specialize and earn a merit badge in Atomic Energy.

He was awarded his Atomic Energy merit badge on May 10, 1991, five months shy of his fifteenth

birthday.

To earn the badge, David visited a hospital radiology unit to learn about the medical

uses of radioisotopes, he made a drawing showing how nuclear fission occurs, but most importantly,

David built a model reactor using simple household apparati including a juice can, coat hangers,

soda straws, matches, and rubber bands.

The scouts were impressed, but David had far greater ambitions.

He got to work with writing as many as 20 letters a day, pretending to be a physics

instructor at Chippewa Valley High School.

This budding young entrepreneur approached groups listed in his merit-badge pamphlet,

such as 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.

He obtained all sorts of information.

The NRC was by far the most helpful and David managed to engage the agency's director

of isotope production and distribution, Donald Erb.

Erb provided tips on isolating certain radioactive elements.

He gave a list of isotopes that can sustain a chain reaction, and imparted a piece of

information that would soon prove to be vital to David's plans: "Nothing produces neutrons,

as well as beryllium."

The NRC had now given David all the information he required to build a reactor, and he just

needed to source the raw materials.

He typed up a shopping list of items that contained very small amounts of the 14 radioactive

isotopes required for the first step.

Americium-241, he discovered, could be found in smoke detectors; radium-226, in antique

luminous dial clocks; uranium-238 and minute quantities of uranium-235, in a black ore

called pitchblende; and thorium-232, in Coleman-style gas lanterns.

David created a neutron gun and was ready to irradiate.

He thought that uranium-235, which is used in atomic weapons, would provide the "biggest

reaction."

But getting your hands on uranium is no simple task.

He hunted hundreds of miles of upper Michigan looking for "hot rocks" with his Geiger

counter, but all he could find was a quarter trunkload of pitchblende, a radioactive, uranium-rich

mineral, on the shores of Lake Huron.

He also posed as a professor again, buying materials for a nuclear-research laboratory.

He obtained a few samples but not enough.

He eventually decided to switch from uranium and instead hunt down some thorium-232 which,

when bombarded with neutrons, produces uranium-233.

David knew, from his merit-badge boy scout pamphlet, that the mantle used in commercial

gas lanterns is coated with a compound containing thorium-232.

He bought thousands of lantern mantles from surplus stores and, using a blowtorch, reduced

them into a pile of ash, so he could extract the thorium-232.

Next David needed Radium.

He knew Radium was used in the paint on the faces of clocks, automobiles, and airplane

instrument panels until the late 1960's.

So he began visiting junkyards and antique stores in search of radium-coated dashboard

panels or clocks.

Once he had enough, David secured a sample of barium sulfate from the X-ray ward at a

local hospital, and used it to concentrate the radium.

Now 17, he'd made significant progress, and David planned to build a model breeder

reactor.

But he needed at least 30 pounds of enriched uranium to sustain a chain reaction.

He was determined to get as far as he could by trying to get his various radioisotopes

to interact with one another.

David said, "No matter what happened there would be something changing into something.

Some kind of action going on there."

He monitored his mini reactor at the Golf Manor laboratory with his Geiger counter.

"The level of radiation after a few weeks was far greater than it was at the time of

assembly.

I know I transformed some radioactive materials.

Even though there was no critical pile, I know that some of the reactions that go on

in a breeder reactor went on to a minute extent."

He said.

It was 2:40 am on August 31, 1994, when the Clinton Township police responded to a call

concerning a young man who had been spotted in a residential neighborhood, apparently

stealing tires from a car.

When they caught up with David, they discovered over fifty foil-wrapped cubes of mysterious

gray powder in the truck of his car, small disks and cylindrical metal objects, lantern

mantles, mercury switches, a clock face, ores, fireworks, vacuum tubes, and assorted chemicals

and acids.

The police must have been baffled!

They called in the Michigan State Police Bomb Squad to examine David's car and the State

Department of Public Health or DPH, to supply radiological assistance.

State radiological experts found aluminum pie pans, jars of acids, Pyrex cups, milk

crates, and other materials strewn about in David's makeshift shed laboratory, much

of it contaminated with excessive levels of radioactive material, especially americium-241

and thorium-232.

How high, you're wondering?

A vegetable can, for example, registered at 50,000 counts per minute, which is about 1,000

times higher than normal levels of background radiation.

After determining that no radioactive materials had leaked outside the shed, state authorities

sealed it and petitioned the federal government for help.

Unfortunately David went into a serious depression after his laboratory was shut down.

Years of painstaking work had been thrown in the garbage or buried deep underground.

Students at Chippewa Valley had taken to calling him "Radioactive Boy," and when his girlfriend,

Heather, sent David Valentine's balloons at his high school, they were seized by the

principal, who apparently feared they had been inflated with chemical gases David needed

to continue his experiments.

David had hoped to pursue a career as a nuclear specialist but he ended up enlisting in the

Navy.

EPA scientists believe his life expectancy may have been greatly shortened by his exposure

to radioactivity, particularly since he spent large amounts of time in the small, enclosed

shed with large amounts of radioactive material.

David died on Tuesday, September 27, 2016, at the age of 39.

His father confirmed that the cause of death was not from radiation exposure, but alcohol

poisoning.

So, do you know other crazy stories of young scientists creating their own labs and experiments?

Let us know in the comments!

Also, be sure to check out our other video called Atomic Bomb vs Hydrogen Bomb!

Thanks for watching, and, as always, don't forget to like, share, and subscribe.

See you next time!

For more infomation >> Boy Scout Tried To Build a Nuclear Reactor in His Backyard - Duration: 10:15.

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As LifeScape Looks To Build A Parking Lot, SF City Council Votes To Rezone - Duration: 1:00.

For more infomation >> As LifeScape Looks To Build A Parking Lot, SF City Council Votes To Rezone - Duration: 1:00.

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Basics on how to make a strategy - Duration: 13:34.

Have you ever had an experience trying to read difficult business strategy books and

always fell asleep? Or maybe you learned but realized it didn't

work in the real business world? If yes this video is for you.

In this video you will learn the very basics of making strategies and we'll also talk

a little bit about business leader mindsets in the end . Anybody

could understand this easily.

This video is the ultimate book summary written by a famous Japanese business leader Mr. Saegusa

who is also known as a business consultant who worked in Boston consulting group.

Okay let's dive right into it. The goal of a strategy theory is to simply

win the competition, nothing else.

Strategy theory are made to simplify what's going on in company and to capture the problems

laying inside. There are problems that can't be easily

cut off or deleted because in a company many relationships and politics

are always there. The strength of a great strategy theory is

that it can drastically cut in directly to the essence of the problem.

From a strategic point of view, it's important to first know how your company is doing compared

to the competitors.

When you look around in your company and you think everything is running fine but actually

you're being crushed by your competitors, there isn't a bright future.

Vice versa , even if you think your company has poor performance but you're doing better

than the competitors you're still winning. Competition is always a relative thing.

Now in order to judge whether your business is doing relatively good or bad or to build

any kind of strategy you need a criteria. By building a hypothesis on where your company

is positioned in the competition is very effective So how do you find out a hypothesis of your

company's position in the market? It's by using the "product life cycle".

Now those who have already learned strategic theory in the past , you might say , everyone

knows that. But you should never underestimate how powerful

this theory is. Let me explain.

In the introduction stage, it's easy for you and your competitors to enter the market.

The gates are open. Here the content of the product itself is

the most important factor to gain competitive advantage.

The trust of the product is not yet built in the market so lowering the price will not

be an effective tactics here.

In the growth stage, many companies are providing similar products.

In this stage, the sales force and after-sales service is important to expand the business.

In the maturity stage, the battle of lowering the price begins.

Even if you try to provide better service, you can't avoid price war.

Lowering the price is the competition of lowering the cost.

In order to lower the cost you need to increase the sales quantity .

And to win this severe competition where volume matters the most , the one who has more money

and capital wins.

In the final decline stage, market share is already fixed.

There is no room to build new edges and there is no place to attack.

The gaps between companies remain as it is regardless of the reason why.

Next. A good strategy must be simple as possible.

A complicated strategy that takes hours to explain is a bad strategy and means that the

output of it is low. A good strategy is so simple as if a child

can understand. A bad strategy is something that takes a whole

day to explain but ends up fuzzy.

Same thing goes with product marketing. When the product is in the maturity stage

in the product life cycle the description of the new product becomes more and more

complicated to explain. That's because the difference between the

competitor's product becomes less to explain.

In other words, if the product can be explained very simple, the product has high possibility

to dominate the market.

One of the keywords in making strategy is"focus" and "concentration".

The tip to succeed in business is to be number one in any kind of small segment.

A successful company that has a good strategy knows their strengths and which battle field

to focus on . Without focus it's impossible to gather

all the energy in the company and execute the concentration.

On the other hand, if the focus is weak and where there's too much "dreaming like

I wanna do this and that", the battle field will be too wide to succeed

Also a good strategy requires extra stretch

and anxiety in the company.Means that a good strategy can't be peaceful for everyone.

A CEO must be a good story teller to his employees but if the business strategy has no focus,

the top can not explain in simple words the management goal.

It's just like a salesmen having difficulty to sell a product that has less competitive

advantages.

Focus means abandon. Business resource is limited and a company

can't do all kinds of businesses. We need to decide what to quit.

If you postpone the decisions to quit, you will just keep on doing worthless investments.

Segmentation is a very useful tool to figure out what to focus and abandon.

It can be used in various ways like business strategy, development strategy and sales strategy.

The process in working on the segmentation requires a little bit of art and creativity.

"Segmentation" is to divide your business market or customers into segments that

have same type of shared characteristics.

The criteria on how to divide must be in line with the strategy goal itself.

There are two different approaches. One is when there is already a product existing

and to figure out who or which customer to sell.

You can put whatever you want in the vertical and horizontal axis depending on

what your product is. In this example Y axis is "the potential

profit the product can gain from customer" and the

X axis is "how the customer engagement looks like in mid and long term".

You can divide your customers in the chart accordingly.

Another is when there is already a market existing and to consider what kind of

new product or business should be developed.

In this example, the vertical axis is "the future potential of the industry" and horizontal

axis is "how high and low the competition is".

Obviously here the upper right side corner is where

The attractive market exists.

Dividing the matrix should be 2 times 2 or 2 times 3 or maximum 3 times 3.

The reason why 3 times 3 is maximum is because any strategy should be simple as possible.

If it's more complicated no one would be able to understand.

After dividing into segments what's next?

Prioritization. Which box to tackle first second and third.

In the example of which company to target. Corporation S has the first priority,

Then the priority should go from A B C D and finally E.

A good segmentation should show which customer or market to focus.

But not only that , it shows which market and customer to not focus.

In order to complete the matrix you need to find the right criteria.

And you need many data to judge where your product is positioned in the matrix.

The segmentation process is a great example how much your company knows about the customer

and market.

After the segmentation is finished the people in your company and sales men clearly knows

where to go selling. That' the power of segmentation.

You can gather the energy in your company and create a guideline of where to focus and

concentrate. But a good segmentation usually brings pain

to the sales staff because it's sometimes out of their comfort zone.

The market place or customer they need to go after is usually where the sales are not

used to go in the past. That might be obvious because they don't

have share there. It might be challenging if the sales staff

is weak. But when you know the segmentation is right

, you need to force the sale team to execute. If the segmentation doesn't have the edge

and enough logic to persuade , the sales will easily lose credit on it.

Now once you came up with a good segmentation , it has to be married with execution in the

real field. And must be monitored very carefully and strongly.

There has to be a reporting tool to follow the progress and results.

The important thing is to build up a system that can follow up the progress.

Without this any segmentation is meaningless.

Next let's talk a little about gross margin and price.

Working in a business with low gross margin means no matter how much you work

it's difficult to create profit. And it's very easy to fall into deficit.

There's only one reason that the gross margin is low.

It's simply because the pricing is not higher than the cost.

And the reason why the price can't be set higher is because that's the only value

customer can see in it.

A price should be set based on the benefit that customer receives not by the cost.

For example , if the benefit for the customer is 100$ even if the cost is a cent it can

sell. Even if the cost is 100$ if there is no benefit

for the customer nobody will buy it for 1 cent.

Fixing price is like game on reading customer's logic.

If the business can not foresee a drastic cost reduction, there is high possibility

that the business isn't fundamentally attractive.

You have to be extremely careful when investing in a project that has low gross margin.

How to deal with a business that is deficit depends on the business manager's sense.

If it's a good deficit which means it's necessary for a certain period for the business

to succeed, that's no problem. But when the business is in the corner and

bleeding that's a bad deficit and actions must be taken to stop it.

Of course even if it's a good deficit, if the company can't bear it and if it's

over the limit it's a bad deficit.

In such kind of situation the golden rule is to run away regardless of all the shames

or relationships.

You see judging a deficit includes strategic interpretation.

If you hold on too long or too short to the deficit you're making the wrong decision.

And that's why you need the right tools to be able to judge strategically like we've

seen in this video. Next about business leaders.

Leaders who are fascinating and tolerant as a human being have one side of the

important element of a business leader. But when they try to run their business by

using only that element they tend to runaway from strategic responsibility.

A leader needs to learn the basics of strategic theory in order to build up the knowledge

and hunch to make proper strategic decisions.

In any era an excellent strategy must be married with an excellent leadership in order to

create great success.

Means a strategist has to go out into the fields.

He must combine theory with execution in the battle field.

And that makes a "strategist professional".

What are the conditions to be a "strategist professional"?

(1) Have the determination to show leadership. Explain why that goal has to be achieved to

the subordinates. Increase morale, encourage them to be creative,

show example that you will think along and fight along with them.

(2) Master the steps to build a new strategy. Understand what choices there are in each

step and be responsible to dig into the details.

(3) Take risks for the new strategy . Be able to sleep tight even when the pressure is on

what no one ever has done before. Lastly here's a question.

"Suppose you have to choose one out of 2 companies to invest that have similar business

contents, which would you choose?"

Company Y has an excellent CEO that is ranked A and has good technology that is ranked B.

Company Z has a good CEO that is ranked B and an excellent technology that is ranked

A.

Which would you choose to invest your money?

Most of venture capitalists would generally say they will invest in company Y.

The reason why is , an excellent CEO is able to judge that his company's technology is

only B grade. And that he would make strategies and tactics

accordingly. But if the CEO is not excellent, you never

know where he might make the wrong decisions. Make sense?

Thank you for watching . In this channel I make book summaries of Japanese

famous business & self-development books. My passion is to introduce great wisdom that's

definitely inside Japanese books to the world. So if you're interested pls hit the subscribe

button so that you don't miss the new videos coming up.

Also if you liked this video pls click the like button and share any comments because

it really helps growing the channel. And if, just if you know any Japanese business

books that you would like me to summarize I would be more than

Happy to hear that from you too. Lastly there is another video that I made

on "how to build a strategy" so if you liked this video pls don't forget to

Check that out too. See you in the next video. Bye bye.