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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.
Yoshiko Harima, Kohtaro Ueki, Otohiko Aizawa
Nuclear Technology | Volume 71 | Number 3 | December 1985 | Pages 617-627
Technical Paper | Radiation Biology and Environment | doi.org/10.13182/NT85-A33684
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Measurements of thermal and nonthermal neutron streaming were taken throughout the medical irradiation room and the two-legged labyrinth of the Musashi Institute of Technology Research Reactor (the Musashi reactor) by using a rem counter. The length of the measured line was 8 m. The measurements were also analyzed by using the Monte Carlo coupling technique. The contribution of nonthermal neutrons was obtained with a cadmium-covered rem counter and that of thermal neutrons was obtained from the difference between the responses measured with and without the cadmium cover. The response ratio of total neutrons to nonthermal neutrons is constant for the straight part of the duct and increases rapidly around the bent portion. The constant values of the response ratio are 2, 3, and 5 for the first, second, and third legs, respectively. The value of 1.5 count / s = 1 mrem / h was used as the coefficient for conversion to the neutron dose rate. The discrepancies between the measured and calculated results are within ∼50% for the nonthermal neutron response, and within a factor of 2 for total neutron response. The fractional standard deviations of the Monte Carlo calculations are 0.07 to 0.12 and 0.13 to 0.24 in the first leg, 0.07 to 0.18 and 0.13 to 0.44 in the second leg, and 0.12 to 0.38 and 0.17 to 0.56 in the third leg for nonthermal and total neutron dose rates, respectively.