Interview with Nuclear Physicist Taylor Wilson
TAYLOR WILSON, APPLIED NUCLEAR PHYSICIST: When I was 10 years old, that nuclear spark hit me. Whatever it may be, I really don't know what it was about nuclear science, but whatever it was that triggered that interest, it stuck. And I went after that one with a passion. You know, just kind of realizing the power, this unseen power within the atom was I think what really drew me to it. You know, knowing that I can hold a piece of uranium in my hand that has enough energy locked in its nucleus to bring down an entire city, that's an incredibly powerful thing. To tell you the truth, the reason I started building my fusion reactor was to make things radioactive. I had this obsession with radioactivity. Short of contaminating something to make something radioactive, you had to have a source of neutrons. I don't have weapons grade plutonium around the house -- or at least not at that time -- but anyway, to make things radioactive, I would need a neutron source. I decided to build this fusion reactor, but with that came this interest in fusion.</s>DR.  RONALD PHANEUF, ATOMIC PHYSICIST: My name is Ron Phaneuf. I'm a professor in Atomic Physics here at the University of Nevada in Reno. I first met Taylor, he was 13. And very first thing he told me was that he had this plan to build a fusion reactor. I knew he was serious. And I remember thinking at the time, that, you know, this is not the kind of project that you want to be doing at home in your garage with your family upstairs or on the other side of the wall. So I started to think right then maybe we could find room for Taylor to do that here at the university.</s>WILLIAM BRINSMEAD, SR. TECHNICIAN, UNR: Well, first impression is he was probably about a foot shorter than he is now. And like I say, painfully young and I was just wondering, could this little guy really be as smart as they say he is? After talking to him, it didn't take very long to figure out that he's very intelligent, very savvy with things -- most anything to do with physics. I figured it would be kind of fun to help him with his projects.</s>WILSON: There were many sleepless nights before I got nuclear fusion. It was an incredible process in my life and time in my life. I can remember checking the neutron detector after my first fusion shock with fusion fuel and seeing the remnants of the neutrons in that detector. And that was an incredible experience. You know, there was lots of laughing and high fives and excitement and calling of parents and friends.</s>KENNETH WILSON, TAYLOR'S DAD: Well, I really don't know what Taylor's got this from. A lot of that ground is I'm a fourth generation Coca- Cola bottler.</s>TIFFANY WILSON, TAYLOR'S MOM: We have no science in our family at all. I kid people -- I have all their lives say, who like, how did you end up with these kids? I said, well, it's all the health foods I fed them growing up, you know, teasing. He kind of started out just kind of, you know, timid and shy and just took everything in and then, you know, just blossomed. Any interest he had, he just went crazy with it. He started out with construction and learned every name of every tractor and from that went to rockets and learned all the rockets.</s>TAYLOR WILSON: (Inaudible) just about one second after it does, the (inaudible), it's starting to filtrate (inaudible).</s>KENNETH WILSON: He was about 9 years old and he had become interested in nuclear energy and nuclear bombs.</s>TAYLOR WILSON: We're constantly being bombarded by cosmic radiation, which is gamma rays, x-rays, neutron radiation from the sun.</s>KENNETH WILSON: So Taylor wanted to go up to Oak Ridge and visit with this professor. He was going to visit with us five minutes. Three hours later, we're still in the department and when we getting ready to leave, Taylor, when you get ready to go to college, I have got a scholarship for you. He's 9 years old and got his first scholarship. I'm sitting there in awe. I didn't know he knew any knowledge or very little of nuclear energy. But after that day, I knew he was something special.</s>TAYLOR WILSON: My holy grail is fusion energy. Nuclear fusion has little to no radioactive waste. It's clean. It's very abundant. The fuels for it are everywhere. There are problems with fusion. It's easy to make a fusion reaction. It's not easy to make a fusion reaction that produces net gain. The so-called breakeven point, where you produce more power out than you put in. There's a joke in fusion energy research that fusion is always 30 years away and it always will be. But I hope I can make it this 30 years and I think I can. It's so powerful. I mean, it is the power of the stars. If we could bring that down to the laboratory and to the power plant on Earth, that would be just an incredible thing. I really think that I'll be the one that makes fusion energy where we're going. I think that will be probably my greatest legacy.