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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.
B. Sarer, M. Günay, M. E. Korkmaz, A. Hançerliogullari
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 52 | Number 1 | July 2007 | Pages 107-115
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/FST07-A1490
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Three-dimensional analysis has been made using the MCNP Monte Carlo code and ENDF/B-VI nuclear data. The nuclear characteristics of a fusion-fission hybrid reactor such as tritium breeding ratio, energy multiplication factor, fissile fuel breeding, first wall radiation damage, and heat deposition have been investigated in a liquid first wall, blanket, and shield for the various mixture compositions of molten salt and heavy metals for blanket layer thicknesses of 20, 30, 40, and 50 cm. The neutron flux load at the first wall is assumed to be 10 MW/m2. The flowing molten salt wall is composed of flibe (Li2BeF4) as the main constituent with increased mole fractions of heavy metals, 2 to 10% ThF4 and UF4. In terms of all parameters, the mixtures with UF4 show better performance than the mixtures with ThF4. The atomic displacement and the helium, tritium production rates remain well below the presumable limits for all mixture compositions of molten salt and heavy metals and thicknesses of the blanket.
