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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.
Nam-Jin Heo, Takuya Nagasaka, Takeo Muroga, Arata Nishimura, Kenji Shinozaki, Hideo Watanabe
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 44 | Number 2 | September 2003 | Pages 470-474
Technical Paper | Fusion Energy - Fusion Materials | doi.org/10.13182/FST03-A380
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The effect of the laser welding condition on properties of the weldment, such as bending, tensile and charpy impact properties were investigated in a V-4Cr-4Ti alloy (NIFS-HEAT- 2). The microstructural and microchemical development in the weldment was also investigated for mechanistic study of the impurity behavior during the welding. Increase in hardness occurred in the weld zone. The hardening was due to the dissolution of the large and small precipitates existed in the base metal before welding. The degree of hardening varied with a distance from the bead center. The absorption energy by the impact test increased with the decrease in the input power density during the laser welding. The impact absorption energy of the weld, which is similar to that of the base metal, was obtained by optimizing the welding condition.
