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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.
Lane Carlson, Mark Tillack, Thomas Lorentz, Jon Spalding, Neil Alexander, Graham Flint, Dan Goodin, Ronald Petzoldt
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 52 | Number 3 | October 2007 | Pages 478-482
Technical Paper | The Technology of Fusion Energy - Inertial Fusion Technology: Targets and Chambers | doi.org/10.13182/FST07-A1534
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the High Average Power Laser program, we have developed an integrated target tracking and engagement system designed to track an inertial fusion energy target traveling 50-100 m/s in three dimensions and to steer driver beams so as to engage it with ±20 m accuracy. The system consists of separate axial and transverse detection techniques to pre-steer individual beamlet mirrors, and a final fine-correction technique using a short-pulse laser "glint" from the target itself.Transverse tracking of the target uses the Poisson spot diffraction phenomenon, which lies exactly on axis to the centroid of the target. The spot is imaged on a digital video camera and its centroid is calculated in ~10 ms with 5 m precision. In our tabletop demonstration, we have been able to continuously track a target falling at 5 m/s and provide a fast steering mirror with steering commands. We are on the verge of intercepting the target on-the-fly and of verifying the accuracy of engagement.Future work entails combining transverse tracking, axial tracking, triggering and the final "glint" system. We also will implement a verification technique that confirms successful target engagement with a simulated driver beam. Results and integration progress are reported.
