The next time you turn on the faucet to brush your teeth and let the water run down the drain while you scrub your molars, consider this: Water covers two-thirds of the earth’s surface, but only 2 percent of the earth’s water supply is suitable for drinking. Nearly 20 percent of the world’s population (about 1.1 billion people) doesn’t have access to clean drinking water.
Making the situation worse, water consumption has expanded twice as fast as the booming global population (which has more than doubled since the late 1950s). The United Nations estimates that by 2025, about two-thirds of the world’s population, including Americans, will be affected by water shortages.
Already 2.6 billion people lack adequate sanitation, which means they have no toilets or sewage systems, which means the little water they do have is terribly polluted. That’s why dirty water kills 1.8 million children younger than 5 each year—more young lives than are claimed by HIV/AIDS, war or traffic accidents.
Those may sound like problems too big for a teenager to tackle, but not to 16-year-old Willie Wick of Urbana, Ohio. He’s a curious high school rising senior who thinks outside the box and who believes that God really can use little guys to do big things. So when the Ohio-based engineering firm LJB, Inc. sponsored a national essay contest asking young people what they thought the greatest scientific innovation of the next 40 years could be, Willie submitted an idea to solve the global fresh-water shortage. How? Use nuclear energy for water desalination. In other words, turn salt water to fresh water and create a positive use for nuclear energy in the process.
“I hope my idea will become reality,” Willie says. “There’s a need, and this solution could be adopted by governments.”
Getting Scientific
The process of thermal desalination has been around for a long time. Basically, water is heated up, and the vapor is captured in a separate container, separating the salt or impurities from the fresh water. The problem is that it takes a lot of power to generate the necessary heat, and it takes a lot of money to generate that power. So unless the water can be sold at a price that provides an economic profit, it isn’t always feasible.
On the other hand, heat—a lot of heat—is one of the natural byproducts of nuclear power, which is used to generate electricity. In fact, nuclear power plants have huge towers that cool steam before it can be released into the air.
Willie wondered if that excess steam could be used to power the desalination process. He got the idea after his dad bought a small home water-purification unit that plugged into an outlet to heat up and distill water. Willie had recently seen news stories about nuclear technology being developed in Middle Eastern countries, countries he knew were short on fresh drinking water.
“[My idea] kind of kills two birds with one stone, because nuclear energy is heat energy, and in order to desalinate salt water, you need a lot of heat,” Willie says with a laugh. “I didn’t invent nuclear technology, and I didn’t discover water.”
But he does know that water is the foundation of life. “You need it to do absolutely everything,” Willie says. “You need it to grow stuff, to drink, to live.”
The young scientist believes that if the international community could urge countries that are developing nuclear technology to use it also to desalinate water, the world’s water issues could be solved.
Rising to the Top
“What intrigued us about Willie’s idea was that he was really combining innovations to solve a problem,” says Mark Thompson, president of LJB, Inc. “A lot of times innovation occurs when you take a technology from one realm and bring it into another realm. I think Willie was doing that at the core.”
While the process is theoretically possible, it hasn’t been tried yet. But as countries continue to use more and more water and fossil fuel resources, it makes sense to look at ways nuclear power can be used safely and more efficiently.
Thompson says his company got more than 2,500 entries for the essay contest, which they held to celebrate 40 years in business. Many of the contestants’ ideas were interesting, such as an automated homework robot, but the judges were looking for ideas that were not only original but would add value to the world. Willie’s essay rose to the top and earned him a first place cash prize of $2,500, which he’ll use toward college. His school also received $1,000.
That Willie came up with an idea that would help others is no surprise to those who know him. He credits his parents for teaching him to always come to the aid of those in need; even their family vacations turn into mini-missions trips. For example, when the Wicks visited Washington, D.C., they spent time taking in the sights and monuments but then found a homeless shelter and pitched in to help.
“My family is very spontaneous,” Willie says. “It sounds a little corny, but I really do have the best parents of all time.”
Willie also has a message for other teens: “Everything we do is supposed to be a mission, because we’re supposed to be shining for God. It’s amazing what we can do as kids.” 
