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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.
H. Andrews, S. Phongikaroon
Nuclear Technology | Volume 207 | Number 4 | April 2021 | Pages 617-626
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2020.1776538
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This study sets out to demonstrate the capability of using electrochemistry and laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) for concentration prediction of multiple species in a molten salt system at 773 K. Samples contained UCl3 ranging from 0 to 10 wt%, GdCl3 ranging from 0 to 5 wt%, and MgCl2 ranging from 0 to 1.5 wt%, with LiCl-KCl eutectic salt as the remainder. Multivariate models were produced using semi-differential cyclic voltammograms (SDCVs) and normalized spectra acquired from LIBS. The SDCV model best predicted UCl3 levels, while the LIBS model best predicted GdCl3 and MgCl2 concentrations. A third model was developed by fusing the SDCV and LIBS signals. This model predicted UCl3 well and predicted GdCl3 and MgCl2 better than previous models. This model was then evaluated by using blind samples. The model predictions correlated well with inductively coupled plasma mass spectroscopy measurements, passing a t-test at a 95% confidence level.
