13-yr UK schoolboy becomes youngest to create nuclear fusion

Jamie Edwards, a 13-year-old UK schoolboy has become the youngest person in the world to achieve nuclear fusion from scratch.

Supported by his head teacher, the Penwortham Priory Academy student created enough energy to smash two hydrogen atoms together to make helium.

Jamie, who has been fascinated with radiation for years told his local paper, it was quite an achievement.

He said he could not quite believe it – even though all his friends thought he was mad.

Taking inspiration from reading about 14-year-old US schoolboy, Taylor Wilson, who had become the youngest to produce a small fusion reactor in Nevada in 2008, Jamie sought help from nuclear laboratories and university departments, but they did not seem to take him seriously.

So Jamie had to fall back upon the laboratories at his school and succeeded in convincing headmaster Jim Hourigan, who came up with the necessary £3,000 funding.

Hourigan admitted that he was a bit stunned and a little nervous with Jamie's suggestion but  was sure Jamie would not blow the school up.

Hydrogen fusion results when high speed hydrogen nuclei collide to produce helium.

Jamie used a 50-year technique old called 'inertial electrostatic confinement', which uses electric fields on the trapped gas in a vaccuum chamber and when charges accumulate on parts of the "jar" the super-heated conditions created cause oscillation of some of the charged ions at such a velocity that some of them merge to produce helium nuclei.

The process also results in a small amount of radiation. Jamie's teachers had to attend a special training session.

NASA is studying the technique to build powerful systems for spacecraft propulsion.