The Boy who played with fusion ~ Taylor Wilson

Taylor is a prodigy who lately took great interest in nuclear energy during his early days of childhood. He had built his own nuclear reactor and performed a nuclear fusion using a fuser at the age of 14.

Taylor Wilson was born in 1994 in Texarkana, Arkansas to Kenneth and Tiffany Wilson. His father is the owner of a Coca-Cola bottling plant, and his mother was a Yoga instructor. Wilson was initially interested in rocketry and space science, before entering the field of nuclear science at age 10.

The University of Nevada-Reno offered a home for his early experiments when Wilson’s worried parents realized he had every intention of building his reactor in the garage.

In June 2012, Wilson was awarded a Thiel Fellowship. He is also a Tedx speaker and an entrepreneur of the future, who takes great interest in finding alternative sustainable sources of energy.

In March 2012, Wilson spoke at a TED conference regarding the building of his fusion reactor.

In February 2013 at Ted, Wilson presented his ideas on the benefits of building small underground nuclear fission reactors. He designed a variation of a compact molten salt reactor that he says would supply about 50 MW and would need refueling only once every 30 years.

Author Tom Clynes, inspired by Taylor, wrote a book “The Boy Who Played With Fusion”.

When Taylor was 11, he found out that his grandmother was dying of cancer. He and his grandmother were extremely close. He had been experimenting with radioactive materials for over a year. He asked his grandmother if he could have some of her urine to test while she was going through nuclear medicine procedures.

He dissected bits of her tumors and lungs, which she had coughed up. Then, he started thinking about how people around the world get these medical isotopes. He learned that they’re made in these multi-million dollar cyclotron and are extremely expensive.

The areas where Taylor made a lot of innovation are counterterrorism and nuclear medicine. His other big development is a system to produce medical isotopes that are injected into patients and used to diagnose and treat cancer. It’s a design that costs less than $100,000 and wheels right into a hospital room—replacing multimillion-dollar, warehouse-size facilities.

Taylor firmly believes Nuclear energy is the future and he has put his heart into it. He says he has tons of ideas in his mind some of which he has already showcased by revolutionizing the way energy can be used.

Reference
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Wilson
https://www.ted.com/speakers/taylor_wilson https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/07/150726-nuclear-reactor-fusion-science-kid-ngbooktalk/
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/11/taylor-wilson/309132/