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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.
J. L. Bates
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 21 | Number 1 | January 1965 | Pages 26-29
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE65-A21011
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The absorption spectra for single crystal and polyerystalline UO2 have been measured between 0.6 and 15 μm at room temperature. The spectrum for UO2 resembles that of a typical semiconductor, opaque in the visible but transparent over a large portion of the infrared. An absorption edge is located at approximately 0.6 μm (2.0 eV). A large optical window extends from 3 to 13 μm. The absorption coefficient for single crystal UO2 has been determined between 1.5 and 15 μm. A maximum value of 57 cm-1 was measured at 1.70 μm with minimum values of 6 cm-1 at 2.75 and 8 μm. The absorption coefficient of polyerystalline UO2 at wavelengths less than 8 μm is estimated to be ten times larger than for single crystal UO2.