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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.
I. V. Shikhovtsev et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 47 | Number 1 | January 2005 | Pages 321-323
Technical Paper | Open Magnetic Systems for Plasma Confinement | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A677
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A diagnostic neutral beam injector based on radiofrequency ion source has been developed at BINP, Novosibirsk for plasma diagnostics in magnetic fusion devices including magnetic mirrors with pulse duration up to several seconds, plasma density up to 1020 m-3 and plasma radius ~0.5m.It was observed that properties of the ceramic plasma box considerably changed after several hours of integrated operational time. After that, the proton specie in the beam essentially decreases. Eventually the proton component of the beam decreases approximately by 10% (from 60% down to 50% by current). This problem can be resolved by protection of the ceramic wall by a Faraday shield. We investigated the shield, which was made of aluminium tube with longitudinal slits and with a diameter close to that of the inner ceramic wall of the plasma box.This paper discusses the results of the beam composition measurements after installation of the Faraday shield.
