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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.
James L. Anderson, John R. Bartlit
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 10 | Number 3 | November 1986 | Pages 1329-1333
Tritium Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST86-A24914
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Tritium Systems Test Assembly (TSTA) at the Los Alamos National Laboratory has been in operation with tritium since June 1984. Presently there are some 30 g of tritium in the main process loop. This 30 g has been sufficient to do a number of experiments involving the cryogenic distillation isotope separation system. In January 1986 two major experiments were conducted. During these experiments the fuel cleanup system was interfaced, through the transfer pumping system, with the isotope separation system, thus permitting testing on the integrated fuel processing loop. This integration of these systems means that of the TSTA subsystem only the vacuum system remains to be integrated into the TSTA fuel processing loop. In the period of June 1984 through May 1986, the TSTA system had processed approximately 108 Ci of tritium. Total tritium emissions to the environment over this period have been less than 3 Ci as elemental tritium and 2 Ci as tritium oxide. Personnel exposures during this period have totaled less than 100 person-mRem. To date, the development of tritium technology at TSTA has proceeded in progressive and orderly steps. In two years of operation with tritium, no major design flaws have been uncovered.