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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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.
Educational Session|Panel|Sponsored by Engineering and Equipment Reliability|Cosponsored by Executive/Leadership, Maintenance and Work Management
Tuesday, August 11, 2020|4:00–5:30PM EDT
Session Organizers:
Jon Anderson (ACA)
Ray Herb (Southern Nuclear Company)
Pareez E. Golub (Sargent & Lundy)
Knowledge Manager:
Sarah Lynn (Luminant)
Nuclear Plants and Utilities are operating on razor thin margins, and the pressure to both increase equipment reliability and reduce cost within ever shrinking operating budgets has given rise to Monitoring and Diagnostics that replace time based PMs. Collectively, there is a need to significantly improved the quality and cost-effectiveness of Monitoring and Diagnostics Centers that are tightly integrated into Work Management. This session will include presentations from utilities that are spinning up M&D centers, fine tuning existing M&D centers, integrating into Fleet M&D centers. There will also be discussion on lessons learned, and integration with Work Management, Operations and Engineering all in an attempt to increase equipment reliability at the most economical cost. Using automation to monitor critical equipment, produce automated equipment health reports, predict needed repairs and reduce the time based maintenance. Come hear about how to justify the start-up costs, establish monitoring scopes using the EPRI Cost benefit tools and COLM strategies.
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