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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.
J. Sanz, M. Garcia, F. Ogando, A. Mayoral, D. López, P. Sauvan, B. Brañas
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 56 | Number 1 | July 2009 | Pages 273-280
Fusion Materials | Eighteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Part 1) | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A8914
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A preliminary beam dump cartridge design has been proposed recently for the IFMIF-EVEDA accelerator. Copper was the material chosen for the beam stop. In this paper we investigate the possibility of designing a practical shielding for the proposed cartridge so that it can offer an acceptable radioprotection response during both beam-on and beam-off phases. The radioprotection analysis is performed for the whole beam dump component located inside the already designed accelerator vault. A comprehensive methodology has been proposed to deal with the problem. Special attention has been paid to the treatment of the neutron source and a significant effort has been devoted to validation purposes. It is justified that prompt and residual dose rates can be provided with a reasonably conservative margin.A base line shielding consisting of a 1 m water tank and a concrete shield of 1 m thickness in front of the tank can be a good approach to fulfill the radioprotection requirement assigned to the beam-on phase. This approach will not be acceptable for the beam-off but it is seen that a feasible solution can be reached by adding a plug at the entrance of the beam dump.
