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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.
Myunghwa Shim, Hongsuk Chung, Hiroshi Yoshida, Haksoo Jin, Min Ho Chang, Sei-Hun Yun, Seungyon Cho
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 56 | Number 2 | August 2009 | Pages 856-860
Tritium Breeding | Eighteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Part 2) | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-13
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We are developing an innovative ZrCo hydride bed design, which is characterized by a large cylindrical filter, very thin cylindrical metal hydride powder packed layer, and large relative heating area per unit weight of ZrCo powder for ITER fuel cycle application. To validate this design concept, two ZrCo bed models each loaded with 127 g of ZrCo were tested by using H2 gas. In the first model, ZrCo powder was packed into the 3 mm gap between the filter cylinder and the vessel, and mold heater elements were attached to the outer surface of the vessel. The second model consisted of a layer of ZrCo powder packing (7 mm thickness), coiled cable heaters attached independently to the outer surface of the primary vessel and the inner surface of the filter cylinder. This paper presents detailed design features of the ZrCo bed models, and test results of the beds performances, i.e., temperature transient of the ZrCo packed bed during fast heating, hydriding rate up to 90-99% recovery, and 90-98% delivery fraction.