https://www.theepochtimes.com/...at-home_2808209.html

A Tennessee teen has become the youngest person in America—and possibly the world—to build a working nuclear reactor and achieve fusion.



Jackson Oswalt, now 14, set out on the ambitious project when he was just 12, according to USA Today, and achieved nuclear fusion in his Memphis home just hours before he turned 13 on Jan. 19, 2018.

“A couple of years back, all I did was play video games,” he told the news outlet. “And I decided I didn’t want to spend all my life doing video games.”

He decided he was up for the challenge and began to learn about nuclear fusion reactors.

“The start of the process was just learning about what other people had done with their fusion reactors,” Oswalt explained, Fox News reported. “After that, I assembled a list of parts I needed.”

He said sourcing components was the easy part.

“[I] got those parts off eBay primarily and then often times the parts that I managed to scrounge off of eBay weren’t exactly what I needed,” Oswalt said, “so, I’d have to modify them to be able to do what I needed to do for my project.”

The bigger challenge, Oswalt told the news outlet, was putting it all together and actually getting it to fire up.
‘Pieces of the Puzzle’

“After a while, it became pretty simple to realize how it all worked together, but at the start it was definitely figuring out one aspect of it, memorizing what that actually meant and then moving on to a different aspect of it,” Jackson said. “Eventually all those pieces of the puzzle came together to make a good project.”

The teen’s father and self-admitted inexpert in nuclear reactors, Chris Oswalt, was worried about his son’s safety. He said he got specialists to give his son expert advice on how to deal with the potentially dangerous levels of radiation and high electrical charge involved in sparking fusion.

The boy posted updates on his attempts to make his reactor work on the Open Source Fusor Research Consortium (OSFRC).

“For those that haven’t seen my recent posts, it will come as a major surprise that I would even consider believing I had achieved fusion,” Oswalt said in a post from Feb. 01, 2018, before adding that “I have made an enormous amount of progress resulting from fixing major leaks in my system. I now have results that I believe to be worthy.”

He posted a readout appearing to show that his setup had generated neutrons.

“I apologize I didn’t get a larger run time,” he wrote, “but I became a little bit too excited at the sight of what seemed to be neutrons.”

According to his claim explanation on Fusor.net, Oswalt achieved fusion on Jan. 19, 2018, hours before his 13th birthday.

“For those wondering why I didn’t post immediately after the 19th, it was because I wasn’t confident at all I had achieved fusion,” Oswalt explained.
‘Jump Through the Right Hoops’

Before a claim is regarded as valid, experts on the Open Source Fusor Research Consortium need to give their stamp of approval.

“You have to jump through the right hoops, and we have to believe you and see what you’ve done,” said OSFRC verifier Richard Hull, according to Fox News.

Hull, a retired electronics engineer from Richmond, Virginia, verified Oswalt’s results and told USA Today the Memphis teen is the youngest known fusioneer in history, both in America and possibly the world.

In the accomplishment of this feat, Oswalt beat the previous record of Taylor Wilson of Texarkana, Arkansas, who was 14 in 2008 when he built a working fusion reactor.

‘Verve and Nerve’

Hull said you need “verve and nerve and courage” to accomplish the feat of nuclear fusion, particularly at such a young age.

“You have to master many disciplines, you have to machine, you have to develop welding skills, gas-handling skills … Younger people typically do not ‘pack the gear,’ to use an old Marines term, to do the necessary work,” Hull told USA Today. “They do not have the attention span. They do not want to work at it, whatever ‘it’ may be.”

“Being a parent of someone that was as driven as he was for 12 months was really impressive to see,” his father told Fox News. “I mean it was everyday grinding; Everyday learning something different; everyday failing and watching him work through all those things.”

"You'll shoot your eye out!"

A working fusion reactor? Bull

And I just got a blow job from Ariana (Barbecue) Grande.

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:
A working fusion reactor? Bull

Color this former Nuke Shipyard member highly skeptical as well.

I read the post a fusor.net.

It appears it is based on the detection of free neutrons generated by fusion.

The detection was repeated by removing and replacing his detector from the stream.

I suggest one of our resident glows-in-the-dark types pops over and reads his claim and explanation.

Sheldon!!!

All fun and games until you have a meltdown or mushroom cloud in the neighborhood.

Perhaps he did, and mega-kudos if he did, but it's still not a fusion process that puts out more energy than it consumes.

And don’t forget this guy

https://arstechnica.com/scienc...cout-died-at-age-39/

David Charles Hahn, who gained some notoriety in 1994 for attempting to build a homemade breeder nuclear reactor for a Boy Scout project in his mom's Michigan backyard shed, has died at the age of 39. He passed away on September 27, but his death did not draw much media attention until Monday.

Breeder reactors are a type of nuclear reactor that generate more fissile material than they consume. They have been researched extensively for decades, and a number have been built, but the approach has largely been abandoned.

Hahn’s travails were most notably chronicled in a 1998 article in Harper’s, which described his story in detail. (That article was later expanded into a book, The Radioactive Boy Scout.)

At the age of 17, Hahn wrote to numerous nuclear industry entities, including the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), posing as a high school science teacher. The Harper's article goes into some detail on his efforts. As Harper's wrote:

David hadn’t hit on the idea to try to build a breeder reactor when he began his nuclear experiments at the age of fifteen, but in a step down that path, he was already determined to “irradiate anything” he could. To do that he had to build a “gun” that could bombard isotopes with neutrons.
…

Again posing as a physics teacher, David managed to engage the agency’s director of isotope production and distribution, Donald Erb, in a scientific discussion by mail. Erb offered David tips on isolating certain radioactive elements, provided 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.” When David asked Erb about the risks posed by such radioactive materials, the NRC official assured “Professor Hahn” that the “real dangers are very slight,” since possession “of any radioactive materials in quantities and forms sufficient to pose any hazard is subject to Nuclear Regulatory Commission (or equivalent) licensing.” David says the NRC also sent him pricing data and commercial sources for some of the radioactive wares he wanted to purchase, ostensibly for the benefit of his eager students. “The NRC gave me all the information I needed,” he later recalled. “All I had to do was go out and get the materials.”
Hahn’s efforts were eventually halted after someone called the Clinton Township police on August 31, 1994—he had been stopped on suspicion of “stealing tires.” Authorities soon searched his car. Hahn warned that he had radioactive materials in the vehicle, and authorities proceeded to call in other agencies, including the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the NRC, and the FBI.

It took nearly a year from Hahn’s arrest until the backyard shed was dismantled and cleaned up as a Superfund site. Hahn later served four years in the United States Navy, including service aboard the USS Enterprise, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. He also briefly served in the United States Marine Corps and then returned back to his home state.

Would not want to be his neighbor...

I have doubts.

I hope the kid gets a free ride at MIT,CAL TECH, or Stanford, and lights up the world! (without the mushroom cloud please)...someday someone will achieve clean energy technology that will rock the world!! Bill Gates started his work in his garage...Why not this kid, or kids like him its the American way...be damn proud if America leads the way.

This reminds me of a 1986 movie where a HS teen in NY State builds a homemade nuclear bomb. It's called The Manhattan Project.

Is this a parody website?

How many other places are reporting it?

The "Epoch Times" is run by the Chinese Falun Gong movement. Allegedly the paper started out as a CIA project to beat the Chinese government over the head with any topic they could find. I've dealt with their German office as my previous boss was president of the German-Taiwanese Society among other things. In recent years they have jumped on the "refugees are destroying Europe" bandwagon. I would regard anything they report as highly dubious.

quote:

Originally posted by arcwelder76:
Is this a parody website?

How many other places are reporting it?

It’s a legit story (at least as far as websites go). I saw it in several places yesterday. Just found it still up on Fox. Also, Taylor Wilson is credited with doing the same thing a number of years ago - at the age of 14, but slightly older than this kid of I understand correctly.

Whether what he created qualifies as a fusion reactor based on whatever definition is another question, perhaps. It certainly isn’t another clock boy, regardless.

-Rob

It's "just" a fusor. Lots of people have made them. Basically as I understand it, under heavy vacuum a high voltage strips electrons from atoms like deuterium or tritium (i.e. a plasma). The now positively-charged nuclei accelerate toward the central electrode grid. If they happen to run into each other, they may fuse, boom. This is confirmed by detection of free neutrons thrown off by the nuclear collisions.

As I mentioned, this is just a fusion demonstrator. Unfortunately, it requires more net energy to sustain than the process yields in total. We're still a long ways away from using artificial fusion as a power source.

Oh, hey, why not just build yer own...

As kkina stated this is not what many of you are probably thinking. Without getting in over my head technically the people who fusor.net has credited with achieving fusion really have accomplished something special.

David Hahn "The Radioactive Boy Scout" gained quite a bit of notoriety when his "collection" became publicized. That story inspired me to do some research into what are known as "Fusioneers". Historically this group has been comprised of retired nuclear and electrical engineers or groups of college students. However, many more individuals have become interested in the fascinating world of nuclear fusion and there has been a bit of a, if you'll pardon the pun, boom in the number of recognized people who have achieved fusion.

I would recommend the book, "The Boy Who Played With Fusion" to anyone who is interested in what type of person engages in this sort of "hobby". The book is about Taylor Wilson who is the sort of kid that gives me hope for our future.

Check out fusor.net for details into the accomplishment.

Note that while he developed and built the device, he didn't invent the concepts or process (nor did he claim to.)

It does look to be a small-scale place where the nuclei of atom A and atom B join up, i.e. 'fuse', so it meets the definition of nuclear fusion. Detecting neutrons being thrown out by the process would seem to confirm that it's working.

While cool, it's not what comes to the layman's mind as a fusion reactor, in the sense we were always hoping for the next thing after fission to be. As pointed out above, this beastie consumes more power than it provides. Not self-sustaining, let alone cascading like a commercial nuclear plant or a bomb. Turn off the power to the device, and no more fusion.

So, yeah, hats off to the kid!

quote:

Originally posted by Jim Shugart:
And I just got a blow job from Ariana (Barbecue) Grande.

No she just licked your donut.