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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.
Qi Zhang, Keiichi N. Ishihara, Benjamin McLellan, Tetsuo Tezuka
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 61 | Number 1 | January 2012 | Pages 423-427
Education, Economics, and Sustainability | Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Emerging Nuclear Energy Systems | doi.org/10.13182/FST12-A13457
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The realization of a zero-carbon electricity system is of vital importance to a future zero-carbon energy system and society. Nuclear power is expected to contribute to the realization of a zero-carbon electricity system much more than intermittent, complicated and costly renewable energy in the future in Japan. Therefore, in the present study, nuclear power development for a future zero-carbon energy system was studied through scenario analysis. The study was conducted in three steps to (i) estimate future electricity demand and electrical load pattern by 2100; (ii) determine the contribution of nuclear power to the electricity generation based on various constraints; and (iii) test the feasibility of the nuclear-based electricity system in term of supply-demand balance. An integrated computer software platform was developed to conduct the analyses. The analysis results show that Fukushima Accident will not affect nuclear development in Japan greatly from a long term viewpoint. Compared with 2005, the total electricity demand will increase by 50% to 2100. Nuclear power contributes 60%-100% of total electricity production and its capacity factor needs to be enhanced from the present 60-70% to 80-90%. The nuclear power can be supplied from advanced LWR, FBR even fusion technology.
