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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.
David W. James, Gregory C. Staack, Simona E. Hunyadi Murph
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 71 | Number 4 | May 2017 | Pages 565-569
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1290971
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Savannah River Tritium Enterprise (SRTE) has used hydride beds to store and process hydrogen isotopes for over two decades. New beds are being designed to use a hydride material – LaNi4.15Al0.85 (LANA.85) – that has a lower plateau pressure than the material previously employed. LANA.85 is expected to have a limited service life due to radiolytic decay of tritium to He-3 within the metal matrix, which will result in degradation of hydride performance. Tritium aging was initiated on a LANA.85 metal hydride sample to look for changes in desorption isotherm performance which occur with aging. Desorption isotherms were collected at 120°C, and 160°C annually. A lower temperature isotherm was collected at 100°C after 2 years of aging. A single absorption isotherm was collected each year at 120°C. After testing, each sample was reloaded with tritium for quiescent aging until the following year. Samples were stored in the beta phase.
Results collected on the virgin material and annually for 2 years of tritium exposure are presented and discussed. The results have shown no unexpected behavior of the LANA.85 materials over the course of tritium exposure. As the service life of a the new hydride bed being designed is greater than 8 years, further annual monitoring and evaluation is recommended to track the effects of tritium exposure on isotherm behavior. Continued evaluation of will reduce the likelihood that unanticipated behaviors will be encountered in full scale production beds within the SRTE Tritium Facility.