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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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Sep 2025
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Nuclear Science and Engineering
September 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
August 2025
Latest News
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.
Technical Session|Sponsored by HFICD
Monday, November 10, 2025|1:00–2:45PM EST|Room 14
Session Chair:
Syed Bahauddin Alam
Alternate Chair:
Xingang Zhao
Session Organizer:
Vivek Agarwal
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Foundation Models for Dynamic Nuclear Systems: Energy-Efficient Surrogates via Deep Operator Learning
1:00–1:20PM EST
Syed Bahauddin Alam (Univ. Illinois)
Paper
A RAG-Model Enhanced Human-AI Collaboration for Advanced Nuclear Fuel Research
1:20–1:40PM EST
Karen DSouza (Idaho National Laboratory), Phyllis King (Idaho National Laboratory), Colby Jenson (Idaho national laboratory), Daniel M. Wachs (Idaho National Laboratory), Tiankai Yao (Idaho National Laboratory)
Machine Learning for Time-Series Forecasting with Quantile Regression and Anomaly Detection
1:40–2:00PM EST
Lauren S. Bailey (Univ. Tennessee, Knoxville), Reagan Barr (Univ. Tennessee, Knoxville), James Carnal (Univ. Tennessee, Knoxville), Aaron Clark (Univ. Tennessee, Knoxville), Braden Copley (Univ. Tennessee, Knoxville), Jake Petersen (Univ. Tennessee, Knoxville), Jamie Coble (Univ. Tennessee, Knoxville), Xingang Zhao (Univ. Tennessee, Knoxville)
Developing a Natural Language Assistant for Operations and Maintenance in Nuclear Systems
2:00–2:20PM EST
Jason P. Clifford (Argonne National Laboratory), Derek W. Kultgen (Argonne National Laboratory), Alexander Heifetz (Argonne National Laboratory)
Comparing Large Language Models against Humans in a Practical Search Application
2:20–2:40PM EST
Alexander McLeod (Zachry Nuclear Engineering)
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