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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.
Maria-Konstantina Laina, M. Hadid Subki
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 61 | Number 1 | January 2012 | Pages 178-185
Fission | Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Emerging Nuclear Energy Systems | doi.org/10.13182/FST12-A13417
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
There is a growing interest in the development and deployment plan of Small and Medium Sized Reactors (SMRs) which can be seen through the numerous concepts that are under design certification and the several units that are under construction, the expanding of potential markets in developing countries, and the increasing demands from the Member States on the supports and role of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The paper summarizes the status of SMRs designs that are under development globally with the aim to give a broad perspective. It presents generic technical issues and prospect of SMRs, the advantages, challenges and parameters that potential markets take into consideration with regard to the introduction of the first nuclear power plant. Some of the issues to be addressed are economics, licensability, operational performance, waste management, safety and security, proliferation resistance and financing scheme. In the post-Fukushima era, the incorporation of the preliminary lessons learned from the accident into the SMR designs is a priority. In the end, the IAEA program on the common issues and technology of SMRs are highlighted with the purpose to facilitate countries with interest in SMRs.