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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.
Sal B. Rodriguez, Randall O. Gauntt, Randy Cole, Katherine McFadden, Fred Gelbard, Len Malczynski, Billy Martin, Shripad T. Revankar, Karen Vierow, Dave Louie, Louis Archuleta
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 52 | Number 3 | October 2007 | Pages 752-755
Technical Paper | The Technology of Fusion Energy - Nonelectric Applications | doi.org/10.13182/FST07-A1580
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A hypothetical Z-Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE) plant was coupled to a sulfur iodine (SI) thermochemical cycle using a new version of MELCOR called MELCOR-H2. MELCOR-H2 was designed to model nuclear reactors that are coupled to thermochemical plants for the production of electricity and hydrogen.The Z-IFE input model consisted of three major system components - a fusion heat source control volume with several types of boundary conditions, an SI loop, and a Brayton secondary system. The components were coupled in order to investigate system feedback and hydrogen production. The input model was modified so that various parametric studies could be conducted. Particular emphasis was placed on plant operating temperature and maximizing hydrogen production.This paper summarizes the results of the SI system model as it was driven by temperature changes in the primary circuit that simulated those that would occur in a Z-IFE driven reactor.
