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Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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.
Leonard Myatt, D. E. Williamson, H. M. Fan
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 47 | Number 4 | May 2005 | Pages 916-920
Technical Paper | Fusion Energy - Fusion Materials | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A805
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A detailed electromagnetic-structural ANSYS analysis of the NCSX Modular Coil (MC) system is presented. The simplified (linear) model is used to provide some insights into the essential behavior of the modular coil. In the actual device, the winding packs are Vacuum Pressure Impregnated (VPI'd) in-place and restrained by 50+ clamps per coil. In general, JxB Lorentz forces press the winding pack (WP) onto the structure which makes the linear (''glued'') approach justifiable. The benefit, of course, is relatively fast computer run-times and a modeling tool which is able to perform numerous design studies. However, there are regions where the electromagnetic (EM) forces point away from the structure and locally invalidate the glued approximation.The results of a variety of design studies are presented, such as the structural stiffness and worst case running loads at the poloidal breaks, non-ideal coil center displacements from thermal contractions and structural loads, smeared winding pack and winding form stresses, and the effects of supporting the convoluted MC ''wings'' with the neighboring shell. Critical results are illustrated with contour plots, and where possible, compared to the NCSX structural design criteria.
