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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.
U. Samm
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 57 | Number 2 | February 2010 | Pages 241-246
Edge Physics and Plasma-Wall Interactions | Proceedings of the Ninth Carolus Magnus Summer School on Plasma and Fusion Energy Physics | doi.org/10.13182/FST10-A9415
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The control of wall loads in fusion devices, in particular with respect to the life time limitations of wall components due to material erosion and migration, will be decisive for the realisation of a fusion power plant operating in steady state, while in a pulsed experiment like ITER the primary goal for plasma-wall interaction is the achievement of a high availability. The article describes the grand challenges of plasma-wall interaction research along the needs for ITER and the strategies of ongoing research for further optimization of the design. Addressed are questions related to material limitations, erosion- and transport processes, tritium retention in deposited layers and transient heat loads.
