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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.
W. T. Shmayda, S. J. Loucks, R. Janezic, T. W. Duffy, D. R. Harding, L. D. Lund
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 49 | Number 4 | May 2006 | Pages 851-858
Technical Paper | Target Fabrication | doi.org/10.13182/FST06-A1213
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) at the University of Rochester has conducted inertial confinement fusion experiments since the early 1970s. Beginning in 1996, LLE filled and fielded targets containing DT gas with pressures as high as 30 atm. Facilities are being upgraded to prepare, characterize, and field targets with DT ice on their inner surface. To this end, process loops that can pressurize DT gas to 1200 bar and operate at 17 K are in the final stages of commissioning. To preclude both accidental and chronic tritium releases and to minimize the potential for exposures to personnel, both metal hydride-based and oxidation drier-based cleanup systems have been installed and commissioned with hydrogen. Cryogenic DT targets will be fielded in 2006.