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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.
19th International Conference on Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Analysis (PSA 2025)
Dr. Matthew Denman is a Distinguished Engineer in Kairos Power’s Modeling and Simulation group. Matt was the responsible engineer for the first Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approved non-light water reactor mechanistic source term topical report. He was also responsible for the development and execution of the Maximum Hypothetical Accident analysis which supported the construction permit applications of the Hermes and Hermes 2 reactors. Matt is currently responsible for the execution of radiological source term postulated event analysis supporting operating license applications for the Hermes reactors. Prior to joining Kairos Power in 2019, Matt worked at Sandia National Laboratories where he supported various probabilistic risk assessment and advanced reactor licensing activities for both the NRC and Department of Energy.
Matt has a PhD in Nuclear Engineering from MIT in 2011 and a BS in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Florida in 2007. He is a long-time member of the American Nuclear Society and received the David Okrent Award for Nuclear Safety from the Nuclear Installation Safety Division in 2021. Matt was the Program Committee Chair for the inaugural Advanced Reactor Safety (ARS) conference in 2024 and is the General Chair for the second ARS conference in 2026.
Last modified June 5, 2025, 1:17pm CDT
