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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.
M. L. Sundquist, J. M. Donhowe
Nuclear Technology | Volume 31 | Number 1 | October 1976 | Pages 140-143
Technical Note | Material | doi.org/10.13182/NT76-A31706
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To observe the effect of helium and temperature on void formation in aluminum, high-purity foils were irradiated with 1.2- or 1.4-MeV Al+ ions at temperatures from 30 to 120°C, both with and without preinjected helium. Dislocation loops formed in all samples, but the samples without helium produced no voids visible in the transmission electron microscope even after doses up to 2.7 displacements per atom (dpa) (6.5 x 1015 Al+/cm2). Samples preinjected with 0.1, 1, and 10 appm helium and then irradiated at 100 and 120°C produced voids at doses of ∼0.5 dpa (1.2 x 1015 Al+/cm2). With irradiation at 75°C and below, voids formed only in samples preinjected with 0.1 appm helium. With irradiation at 100°C, the average void sizes and void densities were not significantly different for the three helium levels, whereas at 120°C the average void size decreased with increasing helium content and the density increased. With helium levels of 0.1 and 1 appm helium, varying the temperature produced an increase in void size with increasing temperature and a decrease in void density.
