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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.
Y. Oya, Y. Hirohata, T. Nakahata, T. Suda, M. Yoshida, T. Arai, K. Masaki, K. Okuno, T. Tanabe
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 52 | Number 3 | October 2007 | Pages 554-558
Technical Paper | The Technology of Fusion Energy - High Heat Flux Components | doi.org/10.13182/FST07-A1547
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To investigate retention characteristics of hydrogen isotopes in the first wall tiles made of isotropic graphite of JT-60U, surface morphology, erosion/deposition profiles and hydrogen isotope retentions were examined by SEM, XPS, TDS and SIMS. It was found that poloidal deuterium retention profile was rather uniform, while the thermal desorption behavior of deuterium was quite different depending on the locations of the tiles. Deuterium retained in the upper first wall, which was covered by thick boron layers with high concentration of B, was desorbed at lower temperature than that in the lower area covered by carbon layers with much less B content. Hydrogen retained during the boronization has significant contribution on the total hydrogen retention. D/H ratio in the first wall tiles was appreciably higher than that observed in the divertor tiles. Probably, the lower temperature of the first wall compared to that of the divertor tiles would prohibit desorption of the implanted deuterium and/or its replacement by subsequent D or H impingement. The injection of high energy deuteron originating from NBI into the first wall could have some contribution on the high hydrogen retention of the first wall.
