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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.
W. W. Clendenin
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 36 | Number 1 | April 1969 | Pages 1-14
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE69-A18852
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The neutron diffusion length of graphite with an added 1/v absorber has been calculated for temperatures from 200 to 2000°K. At each temperature, the entire range of absorption for which a diffusion length exists has been examined. The largest such range, which occurs for 2000°K, extends from the absorption of pure graphite to a value corresponding to 7.3 b at 0.0253 eV. For all values of temperature and absorption, the diffusion length, L, in centimeters is given within 1% by where T is the absolute temperature and σ′ (b) is the absorption cross section at 0.0253 eV. The temperature-dependent functions α(T) and β(T) are given in Figs. 1 and 2. Very good agreement exists between the values implied by this formula and recent measurements. Each calculated value of L has been obtained as an eigenvalue of a P11 approximation to the transport equation. The neutron energy spectrum is obtained accurately as the eigenfunction in the calculation. This spectrum shows the characteristic discontinuity at the Bragg limit, previously known for beryllium, which varies in magnitude with the absorption. There is also a marked hardening of the spectrum with increasing absorption, which significantly affects the value of the diffusion length.