A boy secretly built a nuclear reactor in his bedroom. Then the FBI and Guinness World Records came knocking

Unforeseen surprises might follow some remarkable achievements. Something similar happened when 12-year-old Jackson Oswalt earned a spot in the Guinness World Records by building a working nuclear fusion reactor in his bedroom. Soon enough, however, the FBI appeared at his doorstep to check if everything was all right at his house. Jackson Oswalt, who goes by @JacksonOswalt on X, shared the story of how he managed to build a nuclear reactor but only to be woken up by the FBI on one fine Saturday.

"In the 6th grade, I became obsessed with proving myself. I wanted to show that even though I was young, I could do serious things," Oswalt wrote. He had recently seen a TED Talk by a teenager, Taylor Wilson, who had built a nuclear fusion reactor. "Seeing this opened my mind to the possibility that somebody so young could do something so crazy. And so at 11 years old, I decided I was going to do the same." The first step in the process was to build a "demo fusor" that would create plasma but not achieve fusion at that point. "This required a vacuum chamber, a vacuum pump, and a neon sign transformer with a homemade AC-DC converter." He even ended up taking it to his school's science fair and had gotten it working just the night before.

The project was far from complete by then, though. "If I ran this setup for more than a few minutes, the 'grid' in the center would melt and destroy itself," Oswalt recalled. The boy rebuilt the vacuum chamber, "got a turbomolecular pump from eBay, sourced some deuterium for fuel (somewhat legally) and rebuilt the inner grid from tantalum." He shared how almost every single part of his project came from eBay. "Liquidated research and military facilities would dump tons of valuable equipment for cheap, sometimes in perfect condition. The turbomolecular pump I got for a few hundred dollars was worth nearly $15,000 new." After a year of work, the project started coming together. "After a handful of stressful tests just days before my 13th birthday, I successfully achieved fusion and detected these neutrons as proof!"

Oswalt became the youngest person to ever achieve nuclear fusion according to Guinness World Records. "I also got some less fun attention: one Saturday, I was woken up by two FBI agents who made a quick sweep around my house with a Geiger counter to make sure all was well. Fortunately, I remained a free man," the boy recounted. He also had the opportunity to tour multiple startups in the country. Many people took to the comments section of the post to express their thoughts on the incident.

@John49727559419 wrote, "This was a very dangerous and risky thing to do. Have you considered the danger you could have caused the people around you? Anyway, now show me how to build a very fast and efficient crypto miner." @icryptofairy commented, "Wow, quite the genius. I wish you well on your journey. Stay true to your values and don’t trust anyone. You may break the code. I can feel you will change the world. Odd feeling, but real." Oswalt currently works with Midjourney, a generative AI program and service.