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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.
T. E. Young, S. D. Reeder
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 40 | Number 3 | June 1970 | Pages 389-395
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE70-A20190
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The total neutron cross section of 242Pu has been measured from 0.0015 to 8000 eV, using PuO2 powder samples in the Materials Testing Reactor (MTR) fast chopper. The data give 26.9 ± 2.0 and 18.5 ± 2.0 b for the 0.0253 eV total and absorption cross sections, respectively. It was necessary to correct the total cross-section data for water contamination and for the effect of scattering by small particles. To determine the proper forms for these corrections, low-energy total cross-section measurements were made using samples of Al2O3 and ThO2. Analysis of resonances below 180 eV gives a resonance absorption integral of 1110 ± 60 b, and a neutron s-wave strength function of (0.99 ± 0.44) × 10−4. (A weighted average of data available on this isotope gives 1175 ± 70 b for the resonance absorption integral and 19.7 ± 1.0 b for the neutron absorption cross section at 0.0253 eV).
