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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.
K. J. Heroux, G. A. Morgan
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 67 | Number 2 | March 2015 | Pages 375-378
Proceedings of TRITIUM 2013 | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-T32
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Thermal Enhancement Cartridge Heater Modified (TECH Mod) tritium hydride bed is an interim replacement for the 1st generation (Gen 1) process hydride beds currently in service in the Savannah River Site (SRS) Tritium Facilities. Three new features are implemented in the TECH Mod hydride bed prototype: internal electric cartridge heaters, porous divider plates, and copper foam discs. These modifications will enhance bed performance and reduce costs by improving bed activation and installation processes, in-bed accountability measurements, end-of-life bed removal, and He-3 recovery. A full-scale hydride bed test station was constructed at the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) in order to evaluate the performance of the prototype TECH Mod hyd ride bed. Controlled hydrogen (H2) absorption/desorption experiments were conducted to validate that the conceptual design changes have no adverse effects on the gas transfer kinetics or H2 storage/release properties compared to those of the Gen 1 bed. Inert gas expansions before, during, and after H2 flow tests were used to monitor changes in gas transfer rates with repeated hydriding/dehydriding of the hydride material. The gas flow rates significantly decreased after initial hydriding of the material; however, minimal changes were observed after repeated cycling. The data presented herein confirm that the TECH Mod hydride bed would be a suitable replacement for the Gen 1 bed with the added enhancements expected from the advanced design features.