THE NEXT BIG THING

By ANDREW MCGINN a.mcginn@beeherald.com

John Mobley IV amazed his science teacher four years ago when, as a high school senior, he donated $250 of his own money to ensure the STEM club he co-founded could continue.

Imagine what she’ll say when he donates a cut of his $1.1 million Nobel Prize in Physics.

Well, that’s assuming a lot.

That’s assuming, of course, that the 2017 graduate of Greene County High School does, in fact, become a Nobel laureate one day down the road.

Or that he does, in fact, achieve a Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), having just arrived at the storied university this month.

Or that there’s much of a world even left in the not-too-distant-future as climate change renders our planet inhospitable.

Really, though, Mobley only has control over one of those variables — and if he can earn the one, there’s a chance he can help reverse the other and receive the first.

At present, the 22-year-old Ph.D. student in nuclear engineering is still just getting acclimated to the Boston metro area.

“Boston. How big of a city can it be?” Mobley admittedly wondered before his arrival in Cambridge, Mass., where MIT is located.

“My view looks out over the Charles River. It’s insane. It’s really, really neat,” said Mobley, whose research on advanced nuclear reactors is getting underway in partnership with the private-sector energy company Exelon, the largest operator of nuclear power plants in the U.S.

That Mobley is even there is notable.

MIT announced in March that it had 33,240 applicants wanting to come study at the institution — a number it called “unprecedented.” And at a place like MIT, a record number of applications only means a record number of rejection letters.

Just 4 percent were admitted, the Jefferson native among them.

“MIT was at the very top of my list,” Mobley said. “The East Coast is just a hotbed of research. It was pretty much a no-brainer.”

Mobley graduated summa cum laude in May from Iowa State University with, count ’em, two bachelor’s degrees — one in physics, the other in math, with a minor in nuclear engineering.

An honors student who was in the top 2 percent of ISU students for GPA all four years, Mobley will now apply himself  to the research being done into Generation IV nuclear reactors. While not yet operational, Generation IV systems promise to be the safest and most efficient type of fission energy yet.

With the planet in peril, the stakes could not be higher, or hotter.

MIT itself doesn’t mince words when it says nuclear engineers will provide safe, carbon-free energy that will save the world.

Fission, by the way, is simply the process of splitting atoms. The fissioning of atoms in a chain reaction releases a large amount of heat that can be used to generate steam that drives turbines for electrical production.

Now, how does that save the world? 

A pressurized water reactor uses 27 metric tons of uranium to produce as much electricity as a power plant burning more than 2½ million metric tons of coal, according to the World Nuclear Association, which represents the nuclear industry.

Thus, our dependency on fossil fuels is reduced, which in turn lessens the amount of greenhouse gases warming the Earth.

Mobley believes, to his core, that nuclear energy holds the key.

“If these were implemented,” he said of Generation IV reactors, “you can definitely combat the issues related to climate change.”

Simply put, Mobley is boldly going where few natives of rural Greene County have gone before — and not only is he doing it at the right time, he’s in the right place. To date, at least 96 Nobel laureates over the decades have been affiliated with MIT.

‘Opportunity of a lifetime’

Launa Buxton, a science teacher at Greene County High School, predicts big things from her former student, who served as co-valedictorian of his class.

Buxton called Mobley’s acceptance to MIT the “opportunity of a lifetime.” In the future, she sees Mobley somewhere leading a research department.

“He’ll be looking at the big ideas,” Buxton predicted, “and be leading other researchers working on new and amazing things.”

What truly sets Mobley apart, she said, were the leadership skills that developed over four years.

“Yes, he’s good at science,” she explained recently, “but I didn’t know he’d become such a leader and a people person. That’s what makes him exceptional.”

In 2015, Mobley co-founded the Greene County High School STEM Society, which was among the first student-organized clubs at the school. The hope was to give members opportunities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics above and beyond the classroom.

The club holds special meaning for Mobley — so much so that he left $250 of his own money behind as a graduating senior.

“I would love to see where it goes,” he said of the club.

Buxton initially didn’t think Mobley should donate his own money to the club, but came to accept he’s just that type of person.

He also served as her teaching assistant in chemistry, tutoring peers who had difficulty in class.

“He never made them feel like they couldn’t understand,” Buxton explained. “He’s relatable. He doesn’t ever put himself above others. That’s why people want to follow him. Even though he could do it all himself, he can delegate. That’s a hard skill.”

Mobley always knew he wanted to pursue a life in physics and math. He was the kid who took a screwdriver growing up “to anything I could find.” He quickly progressed from taking apart the VCR to building his own computer, which he accomplished as a high school sophomore.

“Physics helps explain everything in the universe,” he said. “Math is the language to help describe that phenomena. Once you know how the world works, you can better interpret it.”

Mobley doesn’t believe people are inherently good or bad at math — he believes those people who view themselves as “bad” at math just haven’t received the correct way to learn it.

He eventually found his true calling at ISU in an introductory nuclear engineering course.

“It caught me hook, line and sinker,” he said. “Nuclear engineering is just incredibly cool to me.”

Within a year of that first class, he was unveiling his honors project, titled “On the Development, Applicability and Design Considerations of Generation IV Small Modular Reactors.”

But what about Chernobyl?

Small modular reactors, or SMRs, Mobley said, have the potential to provide efficient, reliable and sustainable electrical power.

He noted that an SMR could practically fit within the dimensions of a dorm room. It would be double the height, he said, but it’s the perfect width. No huge containment building or big cooling towers are needed.

“By the end of the decade,” he said, “you will have tangible systems that will be operating.

“This might be the next big thing.”

So what does that mean, exactly? Mobley said a commercial building in New York City, for example, could be powered by its very own nuclear microreactor.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the first microreactors — factory-built and scalable — are expected in 2025 as small, non-carbon-emitting sources of electricity and heat.

Like other Generation IV reactors under development by an international group of 14 nations, they could be cooled by salt rather than water, enabling them to operate at higher temperatures and lower pressures.

France already generates more than 70 percent of its electricity from nuclear power. Nuclear energy from fission accounts for about 20 percent of electricity production in the U.S.

There’s just one catch — the word “nuclear” still inspires dread.

“Nuclear weapons are far from what we’re doing,” Mobley said. “The weapons aspect really does stick in people’s minds.”

Weapons aside, the names Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi all likely ring a bell — and all for bad reasons. Accidents or natural disasters caused the release of radioactive material at those sites.

On TV, Homer Simpson works at a nuclear power plant — consequently, the nearby river is home to fish with three eyes.

With any luck, Mobley — who studied accident tolerant fuels during an internship at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York — will be among the nuclear engineers who can help turn the page on a stigma that has persisted for 76 years.

“If you don’t understand it, you become fearful,” he said. “That’s when speculation starts.”

It may be nothing short of an uphill battle. Mobley, for one, has been dismayed at what he sees as a rejection of science by the American public in recent years.

“It can be confusing. Science is a process,” Mobley conceded.

Climate change, he said, is man-made. COVID-19 vaccines using mRNA are “amazing pieces of technology” that represent how far we’ve advanced in even just a decade’s time.

Yet skepticism and suspicion abound.

Mobley challenges skeptics to consult multiple sources in order to “get a broader picture,” and to learn to recognize what information is real and what isn’t.

But take it from him: Arguing isn’t recommended when interacting with someone who has bought into disinformation.

“You really have to change heart and mind at the same time,” he said.

If he can figure out how, he might be in line for a Nobel Peace Prize, too.