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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.
Guanghui Wang, Hui He, Yaorui Li, Meng Zhang, Yang Gao, Caishan Jiao
Nuclear Technology | Volume 209 | Number 9 | September 2023 | Pages 1373-1381
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2023.2199905
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The contaminated solvent from the Purex process is washed with alkaline detergents such as sodium carbonate, which generates a large amount of secondary wastes. Therefore, hydrazine carbonate as a salt-free reagent deserves to be studied in depth. In this study, the Ce(IV), U(VI), and Zr(IV) metal ions in organic phases containing dibutyl phosphate (HDBP) of 30% tributyl phosphate (TBP)–dodecane were washed with hydrazine carbonate. The effects of the oscillation time (1 to 15 min); temperature (25°C to 85°C); cumulative number of washes (one to four times); mass fraction of hydrazine carbonate (0.1% to 20%); volume ratio of the aqueous phase to the organic phase (0.2 to 5); HDBP concentration (0 to 0.4 M); HNO3 concentration (0.05 to 8 M); and concentration of Ce(IV), U(VI), and Zr(IV) metal ions on the removal percentages of Ce(IV), U(VI), and Zr(IV) metal ions in polluted solvents were studied. The results showed that when the organic phase containing 0.02 M HDBP was washed three times with 5% hydrazine carbonate at 25°C, the removal percentages of the Ce(IV), U(VI), and Zr(IV) ions were 96%, 98%, and 94%, respectively. Meanwhile, the retention concentrations of the three in the organic phase were 35, 28, and 78 mg/L, respectively. The increase of the mass fraction of hydrazine carbonate enhances the removal of the metal ions from the organic phase into the aqueous phase. High acid is not conducive to alkaline washing of metal ions. The increase of HDBP concentration not only promotes extraction but also increases the retention capacity of the organic phase and has the most significant effect on Zr(IV). U(VI) promotes the preferential washing of Zr(IV) while Ce(IV) increases the metal retention concentration of Zr(IV) in the organic phase.
