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Fusion Science and Technology
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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.
A. Nikroo, E. Castillo, D. Hill, A. L. Greenwood
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 45 | Number 2 | March 2004 | Pages 144-147
Technical Paper | Target Fabrication | doi.org/10.13182/FST04-A441
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Copper doped polymer shells can provide a very useful diagnostic for fast ignition experiments currently being performed at various laboratories around the world. The low concentration copper dopant acts as an efficient x-ray source providing information on the physics of fast ignition. We have developed copper doped glow discharge (GDP) coatings suitable for such purposes. Copper acetylacetonate (CuAcAC), a solid at room temperature, was used in a heated jacket as the dopant source. We used this technique to fabricate thin (~5-7 m) GDP shells doped with ~1 at % copper through the depolymerizable mandrel process for fast ignition experiments. The details of the experimental set up and the range and limitations of the technique are discussed.