

Teenage entrepreneur finished his nuclear reactor at 14 - sherm8n
http://pandodaily.com/2012/06/08/pandolist-teenaged-entrepreneurs/#taylorwilson

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frugalfirbolg
Google search plus good memory returned an older article with a bit more
information about Taylor: [http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-02/boy-
who-played...](http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-02/boy-who-played-
fusion)

He has built a Farnsworth fusor: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor>

It is an example of inertial electrostatic confinement fusion. It's CoP is not
above 1.0, but it does produce neutrons that can be used to create the short
lived isotopes that normally need to be express delivered to hospitals because
they cannot be built on site.

When the media originally broke the story I was slightly annoyed with how they
focused on Taylor's ingenuity and obsession, but only briefly mentioned
contributions made by his family and the associates that they helped him
network with. Yes, give the young man his due credit, but for the sake of
others with his potential spend some time on how important it was for him to
have the opportunity to play with a crane, store radioactive isotopes in the
garage, and basically think about and investigate whatever he wanted.

The Popular Science article I linked was least offensive in this way.

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ChuckMcM
I would be really interested in reading about a 14 year old that created a
_fusion_ reactor, and how that reactor worked, since they can't get them going
at Princeton. Even if he was just recreating Fermi's _fission_ pile
experiments that would be interesting. But since there is no information, on
the kids website, or elsewhere, about any of these things I'm a wee bit
skeptical.

