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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.
Jost-Henrich Feist, W7-X Construction Team
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 46 | Number 1 | July 2004 | Pages 192-199
Technical Paper | Stellarators | doi.org/10.13182/FST04-A555
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) stellarator is the largest fusion experiment presently under construction. The main objective of W7-X is to prove the reactor relevance of a stellarator, based on the HELIAS principle, as an alternative to the tokamak. Details of the optimization criteria and the scientific and technical objectives can be found in several publications. At present, the construction of W7-X is close to the start of the assembly. The first superconducting nonplanar coil is undergoing acceptance testing, the first sector of the plasma vessel has been leak tested, the main parts for the outer vessel have been fabricated, the first ports are close to delivery, and many rigs for the assembly are already installed. The assembly started at the end of 2003 with the attachment of saddle coils for magnetic diagnostics on the plasma vessel and will last until 2009 when the torus will be closed. Start of plasma operation is scheduled for the middle of 2010.
