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Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Latest News
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.
K.-S. Chung et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 63 | Number 1 | May 2013 | Pages 16-20
doi.org/10.13182/FST13-A16867
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Although the research of plasma-material interaction (PMI) is rather immature comparing the recent success of Korean fusion program, there are several facilities and programs of PMI research in Korea. DiPS (Divertor Plasma Simulator)-2 is a linear device with a four-inch-LaB6 cathode at the Center for Edge Plasma Science (cEps), concentrating on the development of various diagnostics for divertor and scrape-off plasmas, and for PMI research such as tungsten and graphite related phenomena. This is modified from DiPS-1, which were for the simulations of divertor, space and processing plasmas using LaB6 and helicon plasma sources. MP2 (Multi-Purpose Plasma) is a linear device with an eight-inch-LaB6 cathode for PMI in National Fusion Research Institute (NFRI), and will be merged with molten salt (FLiNaK) experiment by using an Electron Cyclotron Resonance (ECR) plasma source. High power plasma torch facilities have been developed at the High-Enthalpy Plasma Research Center in ChonBuk National University, aiming for the development of new materials of the aerospace-, nano-, and automobile-industries, yet recently they have interest in fusion materials. Plasma Immersion Ion Implantation & Deposition (PIIID) facility has been utilized for the research of processing materials in Korean Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), and is to be used for fusion material researches with high energy ions (~70 keV). Electron beam irradiation has been tried for the research of graphite and tungsten at DanKook university. These facilities are to be utilized for the application to KSTAR, ITER and/or Korean DEMO fusion devices. Dust as the by-product of PMI in fusion device is to be characterized and removed in TReD (Transport & Removal experiment of Dust) device in Hanyang University. Plasma sources, diagnostics, and surface analyses of these programs will be explained with design philosophies and basic parameters of plasmas.
