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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.
A. R. Raffray et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 56 | Number 1 | July 2009 | Pages 333-340
High Average Power Laser and Other IFE R&D | Eighteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Part 1) | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A8924
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The High Average Power Laser (HAPL) program is focusing on the development of laser IFE power plants based on lasers, direct-drive targets and dry wall chambers. One key issue is the survival of the chamber wall under the ion threat spectra (representing ~25% of the yield energy). The possibility of steering the ions away from the chamber to specially-designed dump chambers using magnetic intervention is being investigated. This brings up the intriguing possibility of utilizing a liquid wall to accommodate the ion fluxes in the dump chamber provided the right measures are taken to prevent the liquid from contaminating the main chamber. This paper covers the initial assessment of different magnetic configurations for a laser IFE chamber. Their key characteristics are described; results of the supporting design analyses are summarized; and the major findings and issues are highlighted.
