Can the U.S. be energy independent?

By Catherine Amos

Published: June 26, 2008

In today’s economy of skyrocketing gas prices, many Americans are listening more closely to suggestions for weaning the United States from its oil addiction, and one Culpeper man thinks he holds the key.

Robert Wical, who has lived in Culpeper for the past 25 years with his wife, is the author of “Total Energy Independence of the United States: A Twelve-Year Plan.” Wical is a retired computer programmer and electronics engineer with a master’s degree in business.

Wical is not a scientist, but rather an inventor who spent four years researching his 12-year plan on the Internet, which he says is the first “viable, self-financing plan” that is publicly available. His idea involves the country investing trillions in “integral fast reactors,” or IFRs, that would generate hydrogen as fuel and consume nuclear waste.

“I just kept looking,” Wical said. “With all the things that have been invented and done recently, why is it that nobody has come up with a plan or suggested anything to solve the problem? You can search the world over; there is no plan to make the United States energy independent.”

Wical said he had patents for past inventions, which include an electronics assembly machine and “a cute little flowerpot hanger.”

The IFR, which Wical said comprises known science and proven technology, would use nuclear waste to heat water into steam, using the steam to create electricity. The IFR, according to Wical, recycles its own fuel and thus never has to be refueled It could also generate liquid hydrogen as a fuel source for the country.

“One of these reactors is a gigawatt of power,” he said. “That’s a billion watts. That’s enough to light Culpeper, Charlottesville and Warrenton for 40 years. We could do away with Dominion. And the icing on the cake is it would consume all the nuclear waste we’re trying to get rid of.”

Wical said the IFRs produce electricity for a penny a kilowatt. Today, he said it costs $6 a gallon to make a gallon of hydrogen from water. If the IFR was implemented countrywide, it would cost 35 cents.

He also said fuel cell-powered cars, which use hydrogen, are at least 2.6 times more efficient than gasoline engines.

Because people are afraid of nuclear power, Wical said solutions like the IFR are ignored.

“(People) are ignorant of the facts. Thank God there’s a cure for ignorance,” he said. “They don’t understand (nuclear power). They think everything’s like Chernobyl. What they don’t realize is that if you wanted to plan an accident with a nuclear power plant, you’d build it like Chernobyl. Anything you could do wrong was done at Chernobyl. You don’t have any of those problems with the IFR.”

Catherine Amos can be reached at 825-0771 ext. 138 or .