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Fusion Science and Technology
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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.
C. Poletiko, P. Trabuc, J. Durand, B. Tormos, L. Pignoly
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 48 | Number 1 | July-August 2005 | Pages 194-199
Technical Paper | Tritium Science and Technology - Decontamination and Waste | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A910
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Due to its high diffusivity and different trapping phenomena, tritium is present in materials, such as steels which are in use in different parts of a nuclear power reactor or even in graphite which is present in fusion reactor.From waste management point of view, it is necessary to know as accurately as possible the tritium inventory in such materials before disposal. Moreover the knowledge of tritium species (HTO or HT. . .) is also a significant information in case of detritiation prior to storage, since countries regulation already limit tritium contents and releases. There are three different strategies for tritiated waste management. The first one consists in a storage with confinement packages the second one is waiting for radioactive decay. The third one consists in the application of detritiation processes.Studies have been performed to determine different processes that could be used for tritium removal. The aim of this paper was, to study, at laboratory scale, different procedures which may be used for stainless steels and carbon materials detritiation.Thermal detritiation kinetics till 1300 K has been studied under various atmospheres; full chemical dissolution of samples has also been performed both for steel and graphite, this to perfectly know the tritium content in such matrices. Finally a study of tritium content in steel layers has also been made, to learn about the tritium behaviour. All results are given, allowing the possibility to take a decision either for detritiation procedure or storage conditions.The main result is that thermal out-gassing enables higher than 95 % tritium extraction from the bulk at temperature in the range of 600K, without any material destruction under Hytec gas (Ar + 5% volume H2).