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Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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.
D. Brisset, V. Lamaison, G. Paquignon, J. P. Périn, E. Bouleau, D. Chatain, J. Manzagol
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 52 | Number 3 | October 2007 | Pages 473-477
Technical Paper | The Technology of Fusion Energy - Inertial Fusion Technology: Targets and Chambers | doi.org/10.13182/FST07-A1533
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Laser MegaJoule (LMJ) program plans to obtain Deuterium-Tritium (DT) mixture ignition leading to a fusion gain of ten. Cryogenic targets are hollow spheres whose interior is covered with a solid cryogenic fuel layer. The success of DT ignition depends on quality of the fuel layer uniformity. These targets must be cooled and kept at temperatures near the triple point (19.8 K) with a very good stability (+/-1 mK) for many hours, in the center of the 5 m radius experimental vacuum chamber with a position accuracy of a few microns. In order to validate our current device concepts, we have manufactured scale one prototypes to confirm all thermal and mechanical challenges, such as sharp thermal regulation, cooling autonomy and cryogenic target transfer.
