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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.
B. C. Stratton, M. Bitter, K. W. Hill, D. L. Hillis, J. T. Hogan
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 53 | Number 2 | February 2008 | Pages 431-486
Technical Paper | Plasma Diagnostics for Magnetic Fusion Research | doi.org/10.13182/FST08-A1677
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Spectroscopy of radiation emitted by impurities and hydrogen isotopes plays an important role in the study of magnetically confined fusion plasmas, both in determining the effects of impurities on plasma behavior and in measurements of plasma parameters such as electron and ion temperatures and densities, particle transport, and particle influx rates. Spectroscopic diagnostics of plasma radiation that are excited by collisional processes in the plasma, which are termed passive spectroscopic diagnostics to distinguish them from active spectroscopic diagnostics involving injected particle and laser beams, are reviewed. A brief overview of the ionization balance in hot plasmas and the relevant line and continuum radiation excitation mechanisms is given. Instrumentation in the soft X-ray, vacuum ultraviolet, ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared regions of the spectrum is described and examples of measurements are given. Paths for further development of these measurements and issues for their implementation in a burning plasma environment are discussed.
