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Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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.
P. J. Peterson and M. M. Thorpe
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 29 | Number 3 | September 1967 | Pages 425-431
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE67-A17291
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Measurements of the rate of uranium atom emission from a fissioning surface were made on uranium and uranium oxide sources. A technique was employed in which the sources could be maintained in vacuuo at all times during the experiments. It was found that at the start of an experiment the rate of emission was high, but declined with increasing reactor exposure to a low constant value of ≈6 uranium atoms ejected per fission fragment penetrating the surface for the metal and ≈38 for the oxide. Exposure of a uranium metal source to moist helium, after a constant emission rate was achieved, led to a suddenly increased rate that tended to return to that obtaining before treatment.
