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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.
N. G. Borisenko, A. A. Akunets, I. A. Artyukov, K. E. Gorodnichev, Yu. A. Merkuliev
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 55 | Number 4 | May 2009 | Pages 477-483
Technical Paper | Eighteenth Target Fabrication Specialists' Meeting | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A7430
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Density gradient laser targets with decreasing density or increasing stepwise density layers were reported in experimental and theoretical papers on astrophysics modeling, equation-of-state (EOS), and shock-wave dynamics studies. The research with targets of smooth density gradient is due. The experiments with gel-catalyst concentration diffusion are discussed for density gradient foam formation. We used multi-image X-ray tomography for measurement of the silica gel layer density gradient in the process of its growth. Gel with a density gradient growing from a flat boundary between a gel-forming solution and a catalyst solution has been investigated through a set of three-dimensional frames of an X-ray computer microtomograph. Laser targets require high (>1 gcm-3/cm) density gradients of the spatial profile for EOS experiments. The first targets from silica aerogel with a density gradient are demonstrated. Yet these targets perform less density gradient (<0.1 gcm-3/cm) than is required for pressure multiplication in EOS targets.