The 12-Year-Old Who Achieved Nuclear Fusion
A van full of FBI agents pulled up and surrounded 12-year-old Jackson Oswalt's house...
They weren't there to arrest him though... They were looking for his science project.
The boy from Memphis, Tennessee had convinced his parents to let him build the project after seeing an article about an amateur nuclear physicist on the Internet. So using online information, Oswalt set out to build his own nuclear reactor in his garage.
The 12-year-old sourced almost every part from eBay... quite cheaply. Then he modified the parts to fit his needs and integrated it into his reactor.
As he said, "I rebuilt the vacuum chamber, got a turbomolecular pump from eBay, sourced some deuterium for fuel... and rebuilt the inner grid from Tantalum."
Oswalt's parents paid for everything he needed. They wanted him to be able to explore and learn about science (plus they didn't know enough about what he was building at the time to be that worried). By the time it was done, they had forked out about $10,000 for the aspiring physicist.
Oswalt was trying to achieve fusion, which combines, or "fuses," atoms. As you can see below, that's different from the fission process used in current nuclear reactors, which is based on splitting atoms apart.
It took Oswalt around a year to get his reactor up and running. It was then capable of smashing atoms together with such force that it could fuse them into one – releasing energy trapped inside the atoms. He explained it best himself...
I have been able to use electricity to accelerate two atoms of deuterium together so that they fuse into an atom of helium-3 and also release a neutron which can be used to heat up water and turn a steam engine which in turn produces electricity.
Oswalt achieved nuclear fusion just hours before his 13th birthday – earning himself a place in the Guinness World Records.
After that, the FBI showed up. They swept his house with a Geiger counter to make sure there weren't any radiation leaks. And, finally satisfied, they left Oswalt to continue his experiments while later chuckling on social media that he "remained a free man."
You can see Oswalt demonstrate how his fusion reactor works here.
Of course, Oswalt wasn't the first person to achieve fusion. He was just the youngest.
And while his technical achievement is incredible, he's not going to become a billionaire from it, either.
You see, like other inventors, Oswalt created an energy pit. That means his reactor consumes far more energy than it could ever produce.
That's why all attempts to use nuclear fusion as a commercially viable source of electricity have failed... until recently.
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