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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.
Donna Wuschke and M. Tomlinson
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 31 | Number 3 | March 1968 | Pages 521-530
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE68-A17596
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The radiation decomposition of meta-terphenyl by 1.35-MeV electrons has been measured for temperatures from 200 to 440°C, beam currents from 3 to 100μA and average dose rates from 0.25 to 15 W/g. G(-terphenyl) was 0.25 at 300°C. Decomposition increased above 350°C and depended on the local radiation intensity rather than the average dose rate. At 440°C, G(-terphenyl) increased from 0.62 at 100-μA beam current to 1.6 at 3 μA. Decomposition increased with pulse frequency for intermittent irradiation. Postirradiation thermal decomposition was measured. Thermally initiated reactions did not contribute appreciably to decomposition during irradiation. The results indicate that above ≈ 350°C the radiolytic decomposition mechanism differs from that at lower temperatures. The data provide information about the contributions of radiolytic and pyrolytic decomposition in high-temperature organic-cooled nuclear reactor systems.
