Fission
Wanderer above the Sea of Fog
The nucleus of Uranium-235 is too heavy.
The tenuous grip of the strong force squeezes 92 protons and 143 neutrons into a ball barely 15 femtometers across. It shifts and bubbles, teetering on a knife’s edge of stability.
Under the right conditions, a curious thing can happen. A lone neutron, drifting at a gentle 2,200 meters per second, can slip between the cracks of these 92 protons. The nucleus, absorbing it, becomes Uranium-236.
But Uranium-236 is too unstable. The nucleus writhes, stretches, pinches at the waist. The strong force, strained beyond its limits, loses its grip. The atom splits. Two daughter nuclei fly apart in a brilliant shower of free neutrons, and leave in their wake 200 MeV of energy.
200 MeV is 50 million times more energy than is released by the combustion of a carbon atom. It is a grid too cheap to meter. It is desalination plants turning oceans into rivers of freshwater. It is compute clusters the size of cities folding proteins at the speed of light. It is farms in the Sahara and colonies on Mars. It is a future of abundance for humanity. It is a gift from God.
Today is my 20th birthday.
At twenty, Alexander ascended to the throne of Macedon. Picasso painted The Death of Casagemas. Gates incorporated Microsoft. To be twenty is to desire greatness.
What is greatness in the 21st century? Conquest is antiquated. The arts are saturated. Only technology stands as the final frontier of human progress and ambition.
But technology on its own is not enough.
I spent my summer as a software engineer at a well-funded consumer AI startup in Palo Alto. I worked twelve hours a day on a wonderful and inventive product with an unbelievably talented team. The whole time I felt utterly purposeless.
In their eponymous Choose Good Quests, Trae Stephens and Markie Wagner claim that “history is the record of top players completing good quests.”
I think this is true. I no longer believe that greatness in technology is determined by the size of a fundraise or the credentials of a team. It is the quality of the player. It is the goodness of the quest.
At the same time, there is a growing notion among the nouveau technocratic striver class that success requires sacrificing the things that make one human. I refuse to submit to this.
I’m a member of the MIT varsity lightweight rowing team. I’m in a fraternity. I wake up at 6:00am to row boats in the bitter cold and spend my weekends [REDACTED]. I hang out with my friends. I call my mom. I’m a human being.
Greatness is the full realization of human potential. To achieve it without experiencing the beauty that life has to offer is to not achieve it at all.
I returned to MIT from Palo Alto adrift. I spent the first two weeks of the semester dropping in and out of random lectures in departments I had never heard of. One of them, tucked away in a decaying, windowless classroom, was 22.01: Introduction to Nuclear Engineering.
I switched majors after two lectures.
Here, in the fission of Uranium-235, I have finally found a good quest.
I was once told that greatness requires holding your hand in the fire long after the heat becomes too much for others to bear.
I want to win a lightweight rowing national championship. I want to fall in love. I want to put a terawatt of nuclear capacity on Earth. I want to be great.
I am 20 years old. I will hold my hand in the fire as long as it takes.
Will Savage 11/11/2025
great read. i feel the passion from across the country. it's always great seeing someone find something that calls them.
(i don't believe the arts are saturated nor will they ever be)
I love the message so so much. greatness transcends what we are told to care about; it’s the goodness of the quest and quality of the player. happy birthday will!