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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. Cook et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 47 | Number 3 | April 2005 | Pages 384-392
Technical Paper | Fusion Energy - Experimental Devices and Advanced Designs | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A719
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The European Power Plant Conceptual Study (PPCS) reported in the summer of 2004. Several conceptual designs ("Models") for commercial fusion power plants were developed, spanning a range from relatively near term to more substantial extrapolations. The parameters of the Models were chosen by systems analysis to be economically optimal, given the assigned constraints on plasma and technology performance. The conceptual designs were developed in some detail and analyses were made of their safety, environmental impacts and economic performance. The calculated cost of generating electricity from the Models is in the range of published estimates for the future costs from other sources. Even the near-term Models are economically viable. External costs are very low, for all the Models: similar to wind power and much less than for fossil fuels. Economic optimization of the designs did not jeopardize their safety and environmental performance. All the Models proved to have the attractive and substantial safety and environmental advantages found in earlier studies, now established with greater confidence.