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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.
David J. Nagel, Kamron C. Fazel
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 61 | Number 1 | January 2012 | Pages 463-468
Other Concepts and Assessments | Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Emerging Nuclear Energy Systems | doi.org/10.13182/FST12-A13464
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
“Low energy nuclear reactions” or LENR is the name now given to what was initially and poorly called “cold fusion”. Over twenty years of scientific research on LENR have resulted in some instances of energy gains exceeding 10, the same value as the goal of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, which could be achieved in about a decade. Some of the key experimental data from electrochemical loading of deuterons into Pd are summarized in this paper. In the past two years, engineered LENR systems reportedly have energy gains exceeding 100. The devices, which were said to exhibit such very high energy amplification values, used gas loading of protons onto and maybe into Ni. The character and stated results of the remarkable tests are summarized. Lower gain versions of such systems are now being mass manufactured for delivery to customers during 2011. Requirements for robust validation of the performance of such devices are discussed. A comparison of the history and prospects for both hot and “cold” fusion is presented. It is concluded that small and distributed LENR sources of energy might be in common use by the time hot fusion in large central facilities is finally ready for commercialization.