One thing about TED is anyone can get up and talk, even if it's inaccurate, not news, or just self promotion.

This kid did fusion at 14? He's now talking about "old" fission? Really? He apparently has no idea the inventor of TV, Philo Farnsworth made fusing devices in the 1930s. He's apparently unaware that the Thorium-U233 power cycle was explained in 1942 by Seaborg and associates. He's apparently unaware that we already have been consuming Russian weapons in our civilian reactors -- ~16,000 of them. And, he's apparently unaware that consuming LWR 'wastes' in salt reactors is an old idea.

But, this is TED at its best -- a glib kid in carefully unused jeans, etc., standing on an impressive stage, with a showy mike, in front of an audience that doesn't know better now and won't when they leave.

Gotta love the red tennies though. The retired pope may want a pair now.

;]

There are some things that it may be better not to achieve too early in life and with too little effort. Getting featured attention at a TED event may be one of the things that should not be achieved too easily and without some significant struggle and effort (it can kind of go to your head).

Taylor Wilson is a genuinely gifted and very young individual, he is rather well known in the fusion/Fusor community and he is one of the very youngest individuals to every build a Farnsworth Fusor reactor and produce a respectable amount of fusion from it (I understand Taylor Wilson's Fusor built at the University of Nevada produced ~10^6 neutrons/cm^2/sec which is very good performance for this class of device). Taylor's Fusor was actually constructed 3-4 years ago when he was 14, so that was more of a junior high school achievement (and a rather splendid one).

I do not want to be an apologist for Taylor and his audacious tendencies and dramatic failure to cite and credit sources of ideas for his nuclear designs.

The world likes audacious . . . and the world likes young and kinda cute - (at least perhaps until the first serious radiological accident). While a Farnsworth Fusor is far from a viable way to produce any more than demonstration amounts of fusion power (like most fusion approaches, Fusor advocates hope to scale Fusors to sizes that actually would produce power and net energy - but this has not come close to happening yet).

A lot of Taylor's actual ideas are pretty sound.

Taylor likes fusion but has clued into the safest and least costly approach to sustainably produce nuclear power - molten salt reactors including Thorium fueled ones.

Taylor now has a track record for actually successfully producing working nuclear hardware (even if the hardware was just a well performing desktop Farnsworth Fusor - a project that now about 40 people have built and demonstrated with some variations).

Taylor also completed a very functional Cherenkov radiation detector intended for homeland security application.

It is refreshing to see someone actually build new nuclear designs; we live in an era where, as a result of regulation and cost, most new ideas in nuclear are just paper reactors and simulated projects. In some ways, Taylor Wilson is "old school" and has to date had success accepting good advice from knowledgeable nuclear pros and then, with some creative flair - kind of tinkering things together.

When you are audacious, and young, you sometimes may forget how much you owe others in the origins of your technical ideas. Taylor really does have a lot of great ideas, and right now these good ideas are getting a chance to receive favorable exposure and review - both in the press, at TED talks, and by decision makers like President Obama.

Taylor Wilson has some legitimate credentials by this point that deserve some respect.

In an era when nuclear energy is not the easiest path to take to influence and acceptance, Taylor competed well in very competitive science fair competitions.

In May 2011, Wilson entered the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair against a field of 1,500 competitors and won a $50,000 award.

Wilson later won the Intel Young Scientist Award.

In June 2012, Wilson was awarded a two-year Thiel Fellowship worth $100,000.

Wilson built a working fusion reactor and designed and built a low cost Cherenkov radiation detector for only a couple of hundred dollars in materials (normal commercial Cherenkov detectors cost 10s of thousands of dollars).

Like many people that are young, for Taylor there is more of life (and nuclear engineering) to learn.

Taylor Wilson does a scientific poster session and gets ~20 minutes with President Obama -

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lz361v5xBP1qeaqak.jpg

Robert, no one has said anything but that Taylor is smart. But, it's also wise, when smart, to be clear when you're following rather than leading. His fusor work is fine, but "following". His thorium remarks are "following", and without much proper attribution. That's the unwise part. It means that he's yet to learn the difference between self promotion and advocacy, and why that distinction is so important to all.

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