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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.
O. Vincent-Viry et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 60 | Number 3 | October 2011 | Pages 885-888
ICF | Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Tritium Science and Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A12559
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Two major Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) projects are currently in progress. The US program at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), which has taken its first firing of a cryogenic target with DT fuel this year, mainly relies on cryogenic targets with capillary filled capsule. For the French ICF experiments carried out on the Laser MegaJoule (LMJ), the nominal filling path of cryogenic target assemblies (CTAs) is permeation of DT fuel through the microshell. The CEA Valduc tritium facilities, where targets are filled, are thus original installations with specific designs and technologies.This paper deals with the description of the tritium facilities for the LMJ cryogenic targets (twelve gloveboxes are needed to deliver 6 CTAs at the same time). After a short presentation of the whole gloveboxes chain, the paper will focus on the heart of the plant: the filling and cooling station (IRCC: 4 gloveboxes). 3 out of 4 of these gloveboxes (LCCR, LCTC and LCPC) are at the moment under commissioning at the manufacturer's site. The last one (LCGC) has been delivered to CEA Valduc and is currently under testing with deuterium.A description of the IRCC design and specifications is given as well as the main results of the commissioning process.
