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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.
A. Gibello, F. V. Orestano, F. Pistella, E. Santandrea
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 40 | Number 1 | April 1970 | Pages 51-72
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE70-A18879
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Spectral indexes have been measured in homogeneous systems (solutions of europium and boron). The measured values have been compared with the results of spectra calculations and, independently, have been utilized for a correlation method devised to deduce the reaction rates which are undetectable directly. The reliability of the THERMOS code for spectra calculations in such systems has been shown. A satisfactory test of the correlation method has been performed. The adequacy of the cross-section sets available in the literature has been shown for the detectors 197Au, 63Cu, 55Mn, 176Lu, 239Pu, and 235U. The sets available for 151Eu and 175Lu are not satisfactory: new evaluations have been carried out by properly utilizing measurements reported in the literature and/or new measurements performed for this purpose in a known spectrum. When using the new sets, the agreement between calculated and experimental spectral indexes in the absorber solutions is significantly improved. When reliable cross sections are available for the detectors, the correlation method can be considered a powerful tool for the evaluation of an unknown reaction rate: for instance the 239Pu absorption rate in the solutions is evaluated by means of the measured activation rates without introducing uncertainties due to the correlation procedure itself.
