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Latest News
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.
David R. Terry, Jeffrey A. Casey, Patrick A. MacGibbon, William M. Burke, Atma D. Kanojia, Lihua Zhou, J. A. Stillerman
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 56 | Number 1 | July 2009 | Pages 119-124
Plasma Engineering and Diagnostics | Eighteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Part 1) | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A8887
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An upgrade to the transmitter protection system (TPS) is being designed as part of the scheduled expansion of the Alcator C-Mod Lower Hybrid Current Drive (LHCD) transmitter system from 12 to 16 klystrons. The upgrade design is being done as collaborative effort between Alcator C-Mod and Rockfield Research, Inc. as Phases 1 and II of a Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) grant. A plan is in place to first implement the new design for the cart supporting 4 additional klystrons and then to upgrade the TPS for the existing three carts supporting the 12 existing klystrons. Some parts must be added before longer pulse operation. Experience in operating the existing LHCD system and a study of the klystron design have indicated a need for this upgrade to improve the protection to the klystrons, improve reliability and noise immunity, improve personnel safety and reduce the size of the system.
