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Latest News
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.
Seokho H. Kim, Jeanette B. Berry
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 60 | Number 1 | July 2011 | Pages 156-160
ITER Systems | Proceedings of the Nineteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE) (Part 1) | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A12344
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
U.S. ITER is responsible for the design, engineering, and procurement of the Tokamak Cooling Water System. The TCWS transfers heat generated in the Tokamak to cooling water during nominal pulsed operation - 850 MW at up to 150°C and 4.2MPa water pressure. This water contains radionuclides because impurities (e.g., tritium) diffuse from in-vessel components and the vacuum vessel by water baking at 200–240°C at up to 4.4MPa, and corrosion products become activated by neutron. The complexity of the TCWS design and fabrication presents unique challenges. During completion of the conceptual design of this one-of-a-kind cooling system, several issues were identified because of complex system requirements. Those issues include flow balancing between over a hundred branch pipelines in parallel to supply cooling water to blankets, determination of optimum flow velocity while minimizing the potential for cavitation damage, design for freezing protection for cooling water flowing through the cryostat (freezing environment), requirements for high-energy piping design, and electromagnetic impact to piping and components. Although the TCWS consists of standard commercial components such as piping with valves and fittings, heat exchangers, and pumps, complex requirements present interesting design challenges. The TCWS conceptual design and strategies for resolving critical design issues are described.
