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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.
February 9–11, 2021
We are transforming CONTE 2021 into an virtual conference February 9-11, 2021. This will allow us to deliver the top quality content and technical exchange you’ve come to expect from ANS meetings while ensuring the health and safety of everyone involved.
Virtual Meeting
On behalf of the American Nuclear Society and the CONTE 2021 Committee, we thank you for joining us for the 2021 Conference on Nuclear Training and Education!
We are pleased to bring you an exciting, informative, provocative, and educational conference in a virtual format that allows us to bring our content to a wider audience than ever.
The theme of this year's meeting is “Learning Towards the Nuclear Industry of Tomorrow” and is centered on education and training’s role in shaping the future of the nuclear industry. The industry has faced many challenges in recent years including a difficult economic marketplace and overcoming the obstacle to train and educate a highly knowledgeable and skilled workforce in the midst of a global pandemic. Training and education have risen to these challenges while continuing to improve industry performance. Our CONTE 2021 presenters will bring you their ideas, innovations and best practices that have made a difference in the past two years and going forward.
The central component of CONTE is the exchange of ideas, and you will find those opportunities again this year. We have over 70 presenters across three days with five expert panel discussions. While we can’t replace a face-to-face meeting, we think this conference will bridge the gap, keeping you informed of the some of the best practices, innovations, and challenges in the nuclear industry, both in education and training.
This meeting will be unlike any previous CONTE, but it promises to contain the one thing that has always characterized this conference – a willingness to share and to learn from each other.
Register today!
J. Wesley HinesUniversity of Tennessee Knoxville
Kostas DovasExelon Nuclear
J. Wesley Hines
Kostas Dovas
