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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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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|Panel|Sponsored by MCD
Monday, June 8, 2020|1:00–3:10PM EDT|8
Session Chair:
Robert E. Grove
Session Organizer:
Alternate Chair:
Steven P. Hamilton
Staff Producer:
Daniel Goldberg (American Nuclear Society)
Title: Challenges in Large-scale Modeling and Simulation for Nuclear Systems. The increase in affordable computing capacity, in availability of computer codes designed for high performance computing, and in the need for varying levels of solution fidelity for analysis, design and licensing of complex nuclear systems has driven a desire for multi-scale, multi-physics modeling and simulation capabilities and has required dramatic shifts in the size and fidelity of computational models and computer simulations. This roundtable will feature perspectives from both developers and appliers of computer codes for modeling and simulation across a number of nuclear systems. The purpose is to have an application-focused discussion of how the needs of various emerging nuclear applications are driving the development of tools for analysis and design of complex nuclear systems, and the challenges that are emerging.
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