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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.
Simon A. Vreeke, Gary M. Sandquist
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 42 | Number 3 | December 1970 | Pages 295-305
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE70-A21219
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A method for studying systems of differential equations employing an interactive computer system with a display screen is presented and applied to three nonlinear problems in reactor kinetics. Interactively it is possible to construct phase space solutions of second- and third-order systems of equations. It is also possible to project from the three-dimensional space and to consider the solutions of the equations as explicit functions of the independent variable. The method is demonstrated on three different nonlinear problems of interest to nuclear reactor kinetics. A second-order problem with temperature-dependent reactivity is considered. Two third-order problems with reactivity a function of two effective temperatures and 135Xe concentration, respectively, are also considered. The method of analysis makes it possible to efficiently study the effect of various parameter values on the solutions of the equations. Limit cycle behavior is investigated and the effect of the parameters of the model on the limit cycles is studied with greater effectiveness than can be achieved by an analytical study.
