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Fusion Science and Technology
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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. L. Alfonso, K. A. Moreno, H. L. Wilkens, J. S. Jaquez, A. Nikroo
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 55 | Number 4 | May 2009 | Pages 424-428
Technical Paper | Eighteenth Target Fabrication Specialists' Meeting | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A7421
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A thin gold layer is deposited as a liner on the interior of a uranium hohlraum to protect from oxidation of uranium. X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometry was chosen as the liner thickness measurement method for its accuracy, speed, and ease of measurement. The process is noncontact and nondestructive. The thicknesses were determined using a micro-XRF spectrometer unit with analysis software. The accuracy of the measurements was verified against qualified standards. The method was used to accurately measure gold liner thicknesses of cylindrical hohlraums, and it gave initial promising results for measuring the thickness of a boron-doped gold layer when corrected for the gold atom fraction.
