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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.
K. Munakata, K. Hara, T. Wajima, K. Wada, K. Katekari, M. Tanaka, T. Uda
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 60 | Number 4 | November 2011 | Pages 1440-1443
Detritiation and Isotope Separation | Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Tritium Science and Technology (Part 2) | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A12702
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Large amounts of tritium would be handled in D-T fusion power plants. Tritium is the radioisotope of protium, and is easily taken into the human body. With regard to nuclear fusion reactor facilities, the concept of multi-confinement system is applied to prevent tritium leaking to the environment. The last barrier to confine tritium is a building itself containing all equipment and facilities. If a severe accident takes place, tritium gas could leak into the facilities. In order to prevent tritium leaking to the environment, a secure air cleanup system (ACS) needs to be installed in the building. In ACS, the tritium gas, which leaks to rooms by an accident, is oxidized by catalysts, and then tritiated water vapor is collected by adsorbents. This method can remove tritium effectively, whereas which has a problem related to large ventilation force required to overcome high pressure drop in catalyst and adsorbent beds. Ventilation force could be substantially reduced by applying honeycomb catalysts and adsorbents to ACS. We investigated applicability of honeycomb catalysts and adsorbents to ACS, performing a screening test for the performance of honeycomb catalysts and adsorbents.