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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.
L. El-Guebaly, M. Sawan, I. Sviatoslavsky, P. Wilson, G. Sviatoslavsky, G. Kulcinski
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 52 | Number 4 | November 2007 | Pages 906-910
Technical Paper | Inertial Fusion Technology: Drivers and Advanced Designs | doi.org/10.13182/FST07-A1608
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The 3 GJ target with low repetition rate and thick liquid wall chamber presents the mainline choice for the Z-Pinch power plant. An engineering scoping assessment has been developed for two candidate breeders (Flibe (F4Li2Be)molten salt and Li17Pb83 liquid metal) to identify the design requirements and optimize the components' dimensions. Several important engineering features have been incorporated to improve the Z-Pinch performance. For instance, an advanced high-temperature steel-based structure could operate near 800°C, an advanced power cycle could achieve high thermal conversion efficiency approaching 50%, a low-activation F82H-based steel with controlled impurities will generate only low-level waste, and an innovative idea has been developed to establish jet flow using a sluice valve. This paper identifies self-consistent reference parameters and documents an interesting comparison between the candidate breeders, highlighting the fundamental differences in performance and the benefits and drawbacks of each breeder.
