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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 Humberstone is a Senior Reliability and Risk Analyst in the Division of Risk Analysis at the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (USNRC). Dr. Humberstone works in the Performance and Reliability Branch in the Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research (RES) which uses risk assessments and insights to support a broad range of regulatory applications. Dr. Humberstone joined the US NRC in 2010 in the advanced reactor projects division and has since held several different positions including project manager, reactor analyst, and reliability and risk analyst. In his current role, Dr. Humberstone is the NRC’s representative on the American Nuclear Society (ANS)/American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Joint Committee of Nuclear Risk Management (JCNRM), representing the NRC on probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) standard development and endorsements.
Before joining the NRC, Dr. Humberstone worked on advanced monitoring, diagnostics, and prognostics for advanced reactor designs. He also worked at Sandia National Laboratories in their advanced reactor concepts division while in school. Dr. Humberstone received his bachelor’s degree in engineering physics from New Mexico State University, a master's degree in statistics from the University of Tennessee, and a master’s degree and Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from the University of Tennessee.
Last modified June 12, 2025, 9:57am CDT
