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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.
E. Anselmi, J. Raby, A. Balland-Longeau
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 45 | Number 2 | March 2004 | Pages 157-164
Technical Paper | Target Fabrication | doi.org/10.13182/FST04-A443
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Inertial Confinement Fusion experiments are conducted in polymer capsule in which nuclear products are located. In order to vary optical properties, we need to develop polyimides with high mechanical properties in which we have to substitute all the hydrogen atoms by deuterium atoms. The best way to obtain deuterated polymer is to deuterate monomers instead of direct deuteration of polymers. In a first part, mechanical properties of aromatic polyimide films based on two dianhydrides (pyromellitic dianhydride PMDA and 3,3',4,4'-biphenyltetracarboxylic dianhydride BPDA) and two diamines (4,4'-oxydianiline ODA and pphenylenediamine PDA) have been described. The optimization of synthesis and fabrication parameters of polyimide films PMDA/ODA and BPDA/PDA having high inherent viscosity, so high molecular weight, have allowed us to obtain high mechanical properties. And in a second part, deuterated monomers have been synthesized via multi-steps organic reactions and/or under pressure conditions. We have investigated the preparation of deuterated poly(amic-acid) solutions in NMP and the preparation of the corresponding polyimides deuterated membranes. Results show that deuterium does not affect the reactivity of monomers to form the poly(amic-acid) solution.
