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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.
Robin Miles, Julie Hamilton, Jackie Crawford, Susan Ratti, Jim Trevino, Tim Graff, Cheryl Stockton, Chris Harvey
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 55 | Number 3 | April 2009 | Pages 308-312
Technical Paper | Eighteenth Target Fabrication Specialists' Meeting | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-3448
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Microfabrication techniques, derived from the semiconductor industry, can be used to make a variety of useful mechanical components for targets. A selection of target components fabricated using deep-etched materials including supporting cooling arms for prototype cryogenic inertial confinement fusion targets, and stepped and graded density targets for materials dynamics experiments is described. Microfabrication enables cost-effective, simultaneous fabrication of multiple high-precision components with complex geometries.
