Various media are vying with each other to repeat the name of Jackson Oswalt - a 13-year-old teenager from the American state of Tennessee. This guy claims the laurels of the youngest creator of a working thermonuclear reactor.
And what is most incredible in this story is that the reactor was created in the children's room of an ordinary residential building, located among the same private buildings in a residential area of the city of Memphis. This message should have worried the residents of the surrounding houses. After all, a working thermonuclear reactor is a very dangerous structure for the surrounding. This source of increased danger is not located in an isolated and protected area, but close to the sedate and sleepy inhabitants in a comfortable residential area. And no one is indignant, does not organize protest rallies against the physicist, who neglects all caution, and even in such a young age.
Indeed, a thermonuclear reactor is considered the safest possible type of nuclear power reactor. The reaction of fusion of light nuclei does not produce dangerous nuclear radiation, such as neutron.
However, the installation, which was made by the young nuclear scientist Jackson Oswalt, produces precisely neutrons and suffers from radioactive contamination of the environment.
And this is not at all a "tokamak" - a thermonuclear power plant, but a "fuzor" - that is, an installation for electrostatic confinement of ions. It has been convincingly proven that such installations are used only as sources of neutrons, and not as thermonuclear reactors. Thermonuclear power reactors are not yet able to create even the most powerful world powers, even by uniting in commonwealth and spending huge amounts of money.
Consequently, the installation, assembled by Jackson Oswalt from parts and components purchased for the amount of 10 thousand dollars, is not any thermonuclear reactor. Undoubtedly, this boy deserves respect for himself and his merits should be appreciated, but the role of the brilliant creator of the thermonuclear reactor has not yet succeeded.