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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.
Lisa Marshall
Nuclear Technology | Volume 207 | Number 9 | September 2021 | Pages 1483-1490
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2021.1895408
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Energy plays an increasingly vital role in society where questions around technologies, economics, quality of life, and policies are debated. The link of nuclear energy with the social sciences allows for a fuller examination of human-environment decision making. This paper comes out of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) International Workshop on the Nuclear Social Science Nexus. The development and teaching of a Geographies of Energy course is provided as an example of a pedagogical method to understand the interconnectedness of science and social science. Students in the North Carolina State University China Study Abroad Program in Engineering, Science, Technology & Society (STS) and International Relations unpack the sociotechnical dimensions of resource extraction, energy production, consumption, and byproduct management. A complex network of resources, actors, implications, and outcomes arise, allowing for the study of place uniqueness as well as the connections and interactions between places—China, neighboring states, and international systems—and power technologies.
