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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.
E. Pfletschinger, F. Käppeler
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 40 | Number 3 | June 1970 | Pages 375-382
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE70-A20188
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The fission cross-section ratios 239Pu: 235U, 233U: 235U have been measured as a function of neutron energy between 5 keV and 1 MeV with an accuracy between 1.5 and 3%. Fission events were detected in 4 π-geometry by means of argon-filled gas scintillation chambers. The neutron energy has been determined by the time-of-flight technique. The results were compared with the evaluations of Davey. For the ratio 239Pu: 235U there is fairly good agreement between the measured values and the evaluation of Davey, except in the energy region between 200 and 800 keV. There, our values are ∼2 to 4% lower than those of Davey. The 233U: 235U ratio agrees with Davey's curve for neutron energies <60 keV. Above this energy, our results are ∼5% higher than the evaluated curve of Davey.