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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.
G. A. Cottrell, R. Pampin, N. P. Taylor
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 50 | Number 1 | July 2006 | Pages 89-98
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST06-A1224
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We present calculations of the transmutation of initially pure tungsten first-wall and divertor plasma-facing armor into W-Re-Os alloys in the European Union Power Plant Conceptual Study (PPCS) fusion plant models A, B, and AB. The fusion neutron spectrum was modeled using the MCNP Monte Carlo code including resonance self-shielding effects, and we have calculated the evolution of the W-Re-Os alloy compositions. Trajectories of the alloys in the thermodynamic phase diagram show that the alloys remain in the single body-centered-cubic phase for their service lifetimes. Results for PPCS models A and B with soft neutron spectra show that the first-wall armor transmutes to an end-of-service alloy composition of approximately 91 at.% tungsten, 6 at.% rhenium, and 3 at.% osmium at its rear face. On the plasma-facing side of the tungsten, the effect of neutron shielding is larger. For PPCS model AB, the neutron spectrum is energetically harder, resulting in significantly lower tungsten transmutation rates.
