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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 Technology and Innovation
Tuesday, August 11, 2020|12:00–1:30PM EDT
Session Organizer:
Adam Dow (Southern California Edison)
Knowledge Manager:
Greg Swain (Duke Energy)
This session focuses on the enablement of operational artificial intelligence at scale within the landscape of a broader utility digital transformation which focuses on advanced analytics, digital platform and mobile application development, and robotic process automation. As AI has evolved over the last couple of decades, the industry strategy has shifted from scattered and ambiguous capabilities to solutions that have (1) focused business value and use case, (2) design and control processes for AI-friendly data, (3) harnessing the utility enterprise resources to classify/tag images and data, (4) democratization of AI model low-code/no-code development, and (5) plug and play end-point device capabilities to leverage AI in the field. Discussions in this session will include the linkage of ML modeling to quantify risk and integrate into work management and decision-making processes, tactical AI algorithm development for object detection and condition assessments, and leveraging new forms of data (e.g. photogrammetry, LiDAR, etc.) across an exponentially increasing spectrum of structured, unstructured and streaming information.
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