Meet 16-year-old boy who is the first black student to build a nuclear fusor

A 16-year-old youngster from New Jersey is on his way to becoming the first black student ever to build a nuclear fusor.

The first part of this prototype is already built, and Steven Udotong raised the needed remaining $1,500 to finish the fusor in less than one month, through a GoFundMe page he created.

Once the whole fusor is finished, Steven will enter it in science fairs and competitions, which will help him achieve eventual scholarships.


This 16-year-old boy has a bright scientific future ahead of him.
Steven was one of the three students from New Jersey to be accepted into the Yale Young Global Scholar Program, which allowed him to pursue the engineering workshop at the Singapore campus last summer.

He is now a high school junior, and hopes his nuclear energy construction will ultimately inspire people, at a local and even national level, to adopt cleaner energy sources.

Steven is convinced minorities have opportunities in diverse fields, if they are up to challenges. “I’m proof that there are many ways for minorities to pursue success. Sports and music are not the only avenues for us… Rather, there’s a need for us to participate in academia, business, art, law, medicine, and yes, nuclear energy,” he said in an interview. His older brother Emmanuel is proof of this, being a computer science student at Princeton University.

Drawing of a nuclear fusor prototype.

The teenager hopes the nuclear fusor project will become an example of academic excellence, for other black students to look upon.


Steven comments he started to get curious about nuclear energy after at a chemistry class last year. “I decided to do more research and I soon learned that I could actually make a nuclear fusor. That sparked my interest. I want people to know that there are alternate methods for obtaining power and energy,” he said.

“Nuclear energy is a lot safer than people think,” Steven thinks, so he plans to continue with this quest in the years to come. He firmly believes there has to be “more serious action towards adopting alternative energy sources.”

Here is how a nuclear fusor looks like: