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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.
L. G. Larsson, E. Möller
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 33 | Number 2 | August 1968 | Pages 218-224
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE68-A20659
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Measurements have been made of the decay constant of thermal neutrons in water poisoned with boron and with the non-1/v absorber cadmium. An experimental method has been used in which proper spatial integration of the neutron flux enables data that are representative of the infinite medium to be accumulated without waiting for the establishment of a fundamental mode distribution. The measurements yield effective absorption cross sections in good agreement with presently adopted values. The change in effective absorption cross section with concentration of the dissolved cadmium (dσeff)/ (dN) has been determined for an infinite medium at 20°C. Two- and three-parameter fits of the decay constant yield −(0.32 ± 0.09) · 10−17 b cm3 and −(0.47 ± 0.10) · 10−17 b cm3, respectively, for the coefficient (dσeff)/ (dN). Earlier published measurements have resulted in two to five times larger values, whereas a published calculated value for Nelkin's model is −0.33 · 10−17 b cm3.
