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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
Standards Program
The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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From operator to entrepreneur: David Garcia applies outage management lessons
David Garcia
If ComEd’s Zion plant in northern Illinois hadn’t closed in 1998, David Garcia might still be there, where he got his start in nuclear power as an operator at age 24.
But in his ninth year working there, Zion closed, and Garcia moved on to a series of new roles—including at Wisconsin’s Point Beach plant, the corporate offices of Minnesota’s Xcel Energy, and on the supplier side at PaR Nuclear—into an on-the-job education that he augmented with degrees in business and divinity that he sought later in life.
Garcia started his own company—Waymaker Resource Group—in 2014. Recently, Waymaker has been supporting Holtec’s restart project at the Palisades plant with staffing and analysis. Palisades sits almost exactly due east of the fully decommissioned Zion site on the other side of Lake Michigan and is poised to operate again after what amounts to an extended outage of more than three years. Holtec also plans to build more reactors at the same site.
For Garcia, the takeaway is clear: “This industry is not going away. Nuclear power and the adjacent industries that support nuclear power—and clean energy, period—are going to be needed for decades upon decades.”
In July, Garcia talked with Nuclear News staff writer Susan Gallier about his career and what he has learned about running successful outages and other projects.
18th International Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Analysis (PSA 2023)
Workshop
Sunday, July 16, 2023|12:00–5:00PM EDT|Marriott Knoxville Downtown
Max. Attendees: 50
Description: Dynamic PRA methodologies explicitly account for the time element in probabilistic system evolution and heavily incorporate plant analysis/simulator tools to model possible dependencies between failure events that may arise from hardware/software/firmware/process/ human interactions. Dynamic PRA methodologies can also quantify the effects of phenomenological variability and model uncertainties on the consequences of upset conditions. They can benefit the PRA modeling of passive systems, including the representation of aging effects and digital instrumentation and control systems.
The workshop's objective is to provide a perspective on dynamic PRA methodologies, the circumstances under which they may be needed, and the existing challenges with their deployment. The use of some of the available software tools will be demonstrated.
Agenda
12:00 - 12:10 pm
Welcome and Introduction of Participants – Askin Guler Yigitoglu
12:10 - 12:25 pm
Dynamic PRA: A Historical Perspective by Tunc Aldemir (OSU) and Askin Guler Yigitoglu (ORNL)
12:25 - 12:45 pm
Current Activities and Methods by Valentin Rychkov and Claudia Picoco (EDF)
12:45 - 01:05 pm
01:05 - 01:45 pm
RAVEN Overview by Mohammad G. Abdo (INL)
01:45 - 02:30 pm
EMRALD Overview by Robby Christian (INL)
2:30 - 2:50 pm
Break
2:50 - 03:30 pm
EMRALD Demonstration by Robby Christian (INL)
3:30 - 4:15 pm
RAVEN LWR Demonstration by Mohammad G. Abdo (INL)
4:15 - 4:30 pm
DPRA for Advanced Reactors by Askin Guler Yigitoglu (ORNL)
4:30 - 5:00 pm
Wrap-up and Open Discussion
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Attachment — Statecharts as a Dynamic Method for PRA_Abstract
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