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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.
Bin Liu, Huasi Hu, Tiankui Zhang, Xingyin Guan
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 66 | Number 3 | November 2014 | Pages 405-413
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST13-775
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Parameters of fusion reaction history play an important role in inertial confinement fusion diagnosis. Two types of detectors, named gas Cherenkov detector (GCD) and gamma reaction history (GRH), have been well applied for measurement of fusion reaction history due to their fast responses and capacities for setting the threshold. This study was carried out in two stages. First, simulation of some components of the GRH system was carried out with Geant4. Second, an optimization method by combining a genetic algorithm with the Geant4 code was established and applied to the optical reflectors of the GRH system. The optimization process was focused on 16.7-MeV gamma rays with a threshold of 12 MeV. An optimal time response of 5 ps and an efficiency at the receiving surface of 2.2661×10−2 Cherenkov photons/incident 16.7-MeV gamma ray were obtained at 1.9158 atm of CO2 pressure and a temperature of 20°C.
