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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.
G. Giacchetti, C. Sari
Nuclear Technology | Volume 31 | Number 1 | October 1976 | Pages 62-69
Technical Paper | Fuel | doi.org/10.13182/NT76-A31699
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Metallic molybdenum, Mo-Ru-Rh-Pd alloys, barium, zirconium, and tungsten have been added to uranium and uranium-plutonium oxides by coprecipitation and mechanical mixture techniques. This material has been treated in a thermal gradient similar to that existing in fuel during irradiation to study the behavior of molybdenum in an oxide matrix as a function of the O/(U+Pu) ratio and some added elements. The result of ceramographic and microprobe analysis shows that when the overall O/(U+Pu) ratio is <2, molybdenum and Mo-Ru-Rh-Pd alloy inclusions are present in the uranium-plutonium oxide matrix. If the O/(U+Pu) ratio is >2, molybdenum oxidizes to MoO2, which is gaseous at a temperature ∼1000°C. Molybdenum oxide vapor reacts with barium oxide and forms a compound that exists as a liquid phase in the columnar grain region. Molybdenum oxide also reacts with tungsten oxide (tungsten is often present as an impurity in the fuel) and forms a compound that contains ∼40 wt% of actinide metals. The apparent solubility of molybdenum in uranium and uranium-plutonium oxides, determined by electron microprobe, was found to be <250 ppm both for hypo- and hyperstoichiometric fuels.
