Meet the Pros: Cesar Garcia

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Meet the Pros: Cesar Garcia

09/17/2024

Cesar began his Entergy career in 2006 as a nuclear engineering graduate from Texas A&M. Starting as a reactor engineer at Waterford 3 Nuclear Generating Station in Killona, La., he soon progressed to licensed class where he advanced to senior reactor operator and worked in operations for several years. After a brief stretch with another company, Cesar returned to Entergy in 2018, this time as supervisor in the reactor fuels program at Echelon, Entergy Nuclear's headquarters in Jackson, Miss.

Where is your hometown?

I actually grew up in Laredo, a border town in south Texas. I've only lived in Texas and Louisiana. And funny thing, I knew nothing about nuclear before I got to college. I actually started my interest in nuclear because I wanted to work with space exploration. And I knew they used the nuclear process to heat up circuits for equipment, especially for long distance satellites. But I started learning about power generation and I saw that's another aspect I could go into. Sure enough, that's what I ended up doing.

What does your job entail?

In our group we have the core designers, and basically anything that's outside of that is in my realm. That includes four areas: fuel performance, which is fuel reliability plus fuel fabrication, special nuclear material accounting and spent fuel pool criticality analysis.

Can you explain what criticality means?

Basically, what we mean by criticality is controlling the neutron population. When we put fuel in the reactor, we want to sustain the fission chain reaction so that we can make power. In the spent fuel pool, it's kind of the opposite. We make sure that anything we do in the spent fuel pool will help us stay below the criticality limits, so that we can safely store fuel there.

What projects are you currently working on?

I am and have been working with another team member on an initiative that would make reactor engineering more successful. The initiative would allow them to work less on boring and redundant things, and help them be more efficient with their time. This initiative can also improve their quality of life by reducing the time it takes to create some of our engineering documents.

What do you like most about your current position?

The one thing I like the most, other than the technical side, as a supervisor, has been teaching and bringing up the new generation in nuclear. I've been with the company and in the industry for a little over 15 years. I'm at that middle point where I had the teachings from the older generation, and now I can pass down those teachings to the younger generation and help them become the engineers they want to be. I'm kind of like that bridge between the senior engineers and new engineers. I think for the industry, we all have got to help each other out.

Why do you like working for Entergy?

To me, it's always been the safety aspect. I know I've been in situations in my career, even as a young engineer, where it wasn't like I had to prove it's unsafe. Just mentioning that the work feels unsafe was enough for people who support me to say, "Let's stop. Let's think about this. Let's really evaluate if this is safe or not." The fact that they stopped and listened to a new person who didn't have much experience in the industry made me feel safe to bring up concerns and really showed me that my leadership had my safety in mind.

To me, that was always a plus, and that was one of the main reasons why I came back here, because we talk the talk, and we walk that walk.

Why do you like working for Entergy?

Other than safety, it's probably the teamwork aspect. The more we can bring in people who have different backgrounds, different experiences, different educations, I think we get a better product at the end. It might take a little bit longer to get the product out, but at the end, it always turns out better with everybody's ideas.

What do you like to do outside of work?

My wife and daughter and I are dog people with two little Shih Tzus. For such a small dog, they're so demanding! So, walking with them is an activity that I like to do, along with spending time with friends and family, watching lots of sports and listening to true crime podcasts.

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