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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
Standards Program
The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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Nuclear Science and Engineering
September 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
August 2025
Latest News
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.
Technical Session|Sponsored by NCSD|Cosponsored by FCWMD, RPD
Tuesday, June 18, 2024|1:00–2:45PM PDT|Jasmine G
Session Chair:
Kelsey Amundson
Session Organizer:
Alternate Chair:
Jesse Brown
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Current Overview of Neutron Moderator Thermal Scattering Kernels for HALEU-Fueled Advanced Reactors
1:00–1:20PM PDT
Iyad I. Al-Qasir (ORNL), K. Lisa Reed (ORNL), W.J. Marshall (ORNL), Mathieu N. Dupont (ORNL), Chris W. Chapman (ORNL), Donny Hartanto (ORNL), Walid A. Metwally (ORNL), William A. Wieselquist (ORNL)
Paper
Nuclear Data Sensitivity/Uncertainty Studies of Tantalum-Reflected Systems
1:20–1:40PM PDT
J. Hutchinson (LANL), R. Bulso (LANL), T. Cutler (LANL), N. Kleedtke (LANL), R. Little (LANL), I. Michaud (LANL), M. Rising (LANL)
Data Assimilation Using Deterministic Sampling Method to Selectively Reduce Uncertainty due to Thermal Neutron Scattering Law for Light Water
1:40–2:00PM PDT
Yoshinari Harada (Nagoya Univ.), Hibiki Yamaguchi (Nagoya Univ.), Tomohiro Endo (Nagoya Univ.), Akio Yamamoto (Nagoya Univ.), Kenichi Tada (Japan Atomic Energy Agency)
Neutronics Study of HTR-10: Impact of Graphite Porosity Representation in ENDF/B-VIII.1 TSLs
2:00–2:20PM PDT
Kemal Ramic (ORNL), Iyad Al-Qasir (ORNL), Friederike Bostelmann (ORNL), Chris W. Chapman (ORNL), Anne Campbell (ORNL), Kyle B. Grammer (ORNL), Zain Karriem (ORNL), Jose Ignacio Marquez Damian (European Spallation Source ERIC), Mark Baird (ORNL), Dorothea Wiarda (ORNL), Luke Daemen (ORNL), Eric Novak (ORNL), Jesse Brown (ORNL), Goran Arbanas (ORNL), Luiz Leal (ORNL), Germina Ilas (ORNL), William A. Wieselquist (ORNL)
Cross-Section Sensitivity Studies on Sodium-Cooled Fast Neutron Reactor Isotopes
2:20–2:30PM PDT
A.C. Hellinger (PNNL), C.E. Goodson (PNNL), S.M. Lyons (PNNL)
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