This Teenager Will Revolutionize Nuclear Power | Archives | NBC News

most of us are unable to build our very own nuclear reactor at least in our teenage years who has the tools in the space you're about to meet Taylor Wilson who has in fact already achieved that rare milestone and is looking at a better-than-average future in the world of science tonight Harry Smith introduces us to the young man who's been surprising people for his entire young life I found it based off a in 1955 thisis spend a few minutes with Taylor Wilson and you know you will with an extraordinary person hike with him in the mountains of western Nevada and you will learn what makes him tick and this is just a pile from when they dug out the mine or exactly rarely does a minute go by it seems when Taylor is not thinking about atoms and all the things he wants to make them do there is constant disintegration and emitting of energy going on around us right now from all this radioactivity and there's something very powerful about being able manipulate that right controlling that power for by harnessing nuclear energy 19 year-old Taylor Wilson thinks he can make the world a better safer place and he might just be the one to do it have you thought about I could be a person who changes the world that's what I've always wanted to do I don't think I want to die or go out of this world without doing something has a huge impact I hope that my contribution will be you know clean fusion energy which is incredibly abundant and very powerful but you know completely clean clean nuclear fusion the colliding of atoms to create energy the heretofore unreachable solution to the world's energy needs and if you don't think he's serious get this at 14 Taylor built his own nuclear reactor which led us to wonder how exactly do you raise a genius Taylor Wilson was born in Texarkana Arkansas his dad Kenneth is a coca-cola bottler his mom Tiffany is a former yoga teacher they say they haven't a clue where Taylor gets his smarts do you have any geniuses in your family that's my knowledge we're just hard-working people how about you know no one with an interest in science so we're not sure where he came from wherever he came from his parents quickly saw he was more than just smart in the space watch as a little boy Taylor was obsessed with space but it was the power of the atom that truly energized his intellect even the head of nuclear engineering at the University of Tennessee was in all they just started conversing and we get ready to leave and he said Tyler said I know it's going to be several years but when you get ready to go to college I have a scholarship for you when he was 8 yes I walked out of that building that day I said there's something special here that I've got to treat special so Tiffany and Kenneth went out of their way to feed Taylor's interests but the real shocker everything Taylor knows about nuclear science he taught himself thanks to the Internet my entire learning process was building experiments and buying equipment and collecting the stuff and seeing how it reacted in elementary school he began amassing all things radioactive many items manufactured before there was an awareness of the danger involved this is stuff that you started collecting when you were a little kid yeah all radioactive all radioactive a lot of the stuff you wouldn't expect like these consumer items but this plane is quite intense of radioactive so I got to a point where I'd collected a bunch of this stuff and I realized that I wouldn't to make something radioactive and so you know at the time I didn't have weapons-grade plutonium laying around the house and so I realized I the easiest way to do it would build a fusion reactor at 11 little Taylor told his parents of his big plan to build a nuclear reactor in the family garage and waste sure Tyler yeah I mean we thought you know he'll never do that but Tyler was like that you know anything he did you know he was gonna do were you ever afraid for him we were scared to death just to be honest but if Tyler is gonna learn he had to experience while Taylor was pulling together the pieces for his reactor he was bored silly in junior high Canon Tiffany found the solution in Reno Nevada the Davidson Academy for the profoundly gifted only thing I was worried about it would be a school for nerds a school so selective they admit a tiny handful of the most brilliant students Taylor and his younger brother Joey a math whiz both got in so the Wilsons moved to Reno Davidson sits on the University of Nevada campus Taylor quickly found the professor with a pedigree in fusion research nuclear physicist Ron finesse when I met Taylor he was 13 and he was under five feet tall and he was going to build this reactor in the garage and all the time he was talking I was thinking why were his parents I don't think I'd want a reactor in my garage finesse offered Taylor a corner of his lab instead once you got to know him and started working with him did you think prodigy yeah it didn't take me long to come to the conclusion that this was a prodigy probably one of the most brilliant people if not the most brilliant person I've ever met just five months after he met dr. Finn F Taylor made nuclear fusion not the kind that could create an endless energy supply but an important step to that ultimate goal I started jumping up and down and high-fiving I mean I was I was very excited he was 14 years old making him the youngest person ever to do it safe we can crank this thing up he showed us how it works and we almost understood it there yeah Wow that's the plan this is the same basic nuclear reaction that's constantly taking place in the Sun and all the stars you've recreated what happens inside us exactly replaced the gravity in the large quantities of fuel with a very small amount of fuel and essentially electricity but creating fusion wasn't the end it was the beginning in that moment I thought well yeah fusion is cool but this isn't particularly novel I want to go out and actually do something now I want to challenge since then he's invented a cheaper way to make medical isotopes for cancer detection and treatment he's also built a screening system that will detect nuclear materials smuggled in shipping containers the plan is to put 10 of these things out there at ports for six months and kind of like a beta test but know I've proven that this thing can detect weapons-grade plutonium it won him first prize at the Intel Science Fair and an invitation to the White House let's test this sucker out see what works yeah well they wouldn't let me uh turn it on secret service really didn't want me bringing my nuclear reactor you got to meet the President and What did he say he said why we hired this guy yet he thought I was gonna come work for him and yeah of course I respect him in his department but I think I'm gonna sell these things to him so I feel like so Taylor is a genius and an entrepreneur and yes the government is interested in his invention it might also be interested and all that stuff he's been collecting what are you keeping the safe higher activity stuff stuff that's a little bit more dangerous so we've got things like yellow cake comes out here you have yellow cake woman a yellow cake and it's quite radioactive and this is the stuff that Nazir was supposedly selling exactly to the Domino Museum and that's why we went to war innings I wrong so you made this yourself oh yeah that's all homemade does the Department of Homeland Security know you have all this stuff I know it's here it's not illegal or anything like that but they definitely keep an eye on me Taylor's latest idea could be an energy game-changer he's reimagined to technology he says he's stuck in another century the power plant designs we have right now are essentially the same reactor design we came up with in the 1950s Taylor's figured out how to build many nuclear power plants that he says will not malfunction what I developed was essentially something that is buried below the ground and it's a box you can think of it more like a battery than a reactor it's very stable it doesn't need much maintaining and it can't have these kind of accidents that a typical nuclear reactor and no milk no meltdowns an event of any kind of incident the reactor all the radiation stays inside Courtney exactly with the help of a tio fellowship that him to skip college he's starting his own company to bring these reactors and other ideas to market he's going to do something that's going to change the world I feel really privileged to have him come along during the last few years of my own career it's been really fun it's been a great ride Taylor is also enjoying the ride but only he can envision the road ahead are you on the ground floor of your own imagination I've got a lot more ideas in fact I won't be able to get through them all probably in my lifetime but I'm working on what I can and it's only going up from here how incredible is he Harry Smith with our report tonight from Reno Nevada

Channel: NBC News

Views: 1,564,997

Rating: 4.735261 out of 5

Keywords: nbc news, nbc, news, news channel, news station, newspaper, breaking news, us news, world news, politics, nightly news, current events, top stories, pop culture, business, health, prodigy, genius, science, child prodigy, taylor wilson, nuclear reactor, fusion reactor, science breakthroughs

Id: PINttscIAEo

Length: 9min 28sec (568 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 02 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/HopeFox]

Science and engineering don't work like that in real life. No one person revolutionizes anything, not in this century. It's that way of thinking that lets charlatans like Musk get away with their lies and posturing.

I don't doubt that this kid is very clever and will make important contributions to the field if he works hard at it, but there will be no revolution.

[u/j33yw3ly]

This is alot of pressure to put on somebody. I've read about three kids making nuclear reactors by now, maybe this isn't a genius thing but a very intelligent/resourceful/wealthy situation. What exactly makes him different from the other thousands of nuclear engineers?

[u/George_G_Geef]

That weirdo who spent his life designing bear-proof armor is more of a real Tony Stark than Musk.

Also Musk's big "innovations" are exchanging money electronically but worse than by just going through the bank, selling a kind of car that was actually more popular than gas powered cars during the early history of the automobile, owning a rocket company, a pipe people can ride in and a tunnel you can drive through. Oh and a regular gas torch in the shape of a gun.

If he's anybody he's Booster Gold but instead of actually being from the future his power was just talking about vaguely futuristic shit.

[u/CrookedHillaryShill]

Why? Because his mom and dad bought him tens of thousands in lab equipment?

[u/Spuknoggin]

I hope that kid can actually do something when he gets through school. When I read about David Hahn, I was really disappointed he didn’t end up following what ever dreams he had as a kid.