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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.
Ph. Moreau, S. Bremond, D. Douai, A. Geraud, P. Hertout, M. Lennholm, D. Mazon, F. Saint-Laurent, Tore Supra Team
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 56 | Number 3 | October 2009 | Pages 1284-1299
Technical Papers | Tore Supra Special Issue | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A9178
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Tore Supra tokamak is devoted to long-duration, high-performance plasma research. The real-time measurements and control (RTMC) system has been developed to address the basic tokamak controls, such as plasma equilibrium and density control. Over the years, more and more sophisticated and demanding controls have been implemented, allowing the improvement of plasma performance and machine protection. This includes current profile control to enhance the performance and to avoid magnetohydrodynamic instabilities, infrared monitoring of plasma-facing components to prevent overheating, and disruption detection and mitigation techniques. Most of these improvements are relevant to the plasma operation in a full steady-state regime. This paper describes the present status of the Tore Supra RTMC system, detailing recent progress and highlighting the advantages of the various control schemes implemented so far.
