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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. R. Bunney, D. Sam
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 39 | Number 1 | January 1970 | Pages 81-91
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE70-A21173
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Experimental measurements of the gamma-ray spectra emitted by the products of thermal-neutron fission of 235U have been made at nine selected times (¼, ½, 1, 2, 5, 10, 24, 48, and 72 h) after fission. A calibrated and highly collimated 5- × 5-in. NaI(T1) detector was used. The 100-energy-bin γ-ray spectra were unfolded from the pulse-height distributions by means of an iterative method. Extensive use was made of machine computation. The number of fissions in each sample was determined radiochemically. Significant differences between this work and calculated spectra were found. At the earlier times the experimental photon emission rate is higher than the calculated rate by as much as 40%. At later times the experimental rate is 20% lower than the calculated rate. Surprisingly large differences (as much as 33%) were found between the photon emission rates of products of fission by slow neutrons and by fast neutrons.
