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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.
M. Emoto, M. Yoshida, H. Nakanishi, T. Yamamoto, T. Watanabe, K. Watanabe, M. Shoji, Y. Nagayama, LHD Experiment Group
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 58 | Number 1 | July-August 2010 | Pages 458-464
Chapter 8. Diagnostics | Special Issue on Large Helical Device (LHD) | doi.org/10.13182/FST10-A10831
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Large Helical Device (LHD) experiments are executed with the collaboration of many universities in Japan. Therefore, remote participation plays an important role. In this paper, the authors introduce the current remote participation facilities for these experiments. National Institute for Fusion Science (NIFS) remote participation facilities fall into three categories. The first, remote access, allows direct access to the experimental network. This is the most flexible way to use computer resources remotely. For this purpose, virtual private network (VPN) service is available for coresearchers. In addition, several laboratories are connected directly via SINET3. Once researchers connect to the network, they can use the computer as if they are at the NIFS. The next is remote data reference. Users can view experimental data in a Web browser. Also, they can use a browser to retrieve basic information about experiments that is stored in a relational database. The last is video services. Remote researchers can use a videoconference system to communicate with researchers at the NIFS, and they can use Web browsers to watch the main monitor image displayed in the control room. For security reasons, the entire network is protected by a firewall, and one-time password authentication is used to realize secure VPN access.