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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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September 2025
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August 2025
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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.
26th Technology of Fusion Energy Meeting (TOFE 2024)
Kieran is the CEO of Realta Fusion, an early-stage company developing fusion energy for applications in industrial process heat and power. He has extensive experience in start-ups and venture capital, particularly in the areas of energy, cleantech/climatetech, ag & food and industrial biotech. Kieran spent the first decade of his career with ICI and Johnson Matthey in the chemical industry in a range of technical and commercial roles across the globe – in Argentina, Germany, the UK and the USA. Following that, he moved into start-ups and worked on advanced fuels, bioplastics, waste-to-energy technologies, including the development of the first 100% bio-based Coca-Cola™ bottle.
In 2017, Kieran returned to his native country and launched the $24M Ireland Agtech Fund – a partnership between Finistere Ventures and the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund. In addition to his role with Realta Fusion, he is also a Senior Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Kieran served on the board of a number of start-ups and has mentored innovators from academia as they commercialized technology emerging from their research. He has a degree in Chemical Engineering from University College Dublin, Ireland and an MBA from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar.
About Realta Fusion
Realta Fusion is an early-stage fusion energy company which spun out of a large ARPA-e funded project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The company raised a successful seed financing round in May 2023 led by Khosla Ventures and is an awardee of the Department of Energy’s Milestone Fusion Program. Realta is developing compact magnetic mirror fusion generators as the lowest capex and least complex path to commercially competitive fusion energy. Realta is targeting the need to decarbonize industrial process heat as the fastest path to full-scale deployment of this technology. The company is based in Madison, WI.
Last modified April 5, 2024, 10:07am CDT
