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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.
International High Level Radioactive Waste Management (IHLRWM 2025)
Technical Session
Tuesday, November 11, 2025|3:15–5:00PM EST|Room 3
Session Chair:
Erika Holt
Session Organizer:
Alternate Chair:
Emily R. Stein
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Transatlantic Cooperation of the European Partnership on Radioactive Waste Management with the USA
3:15–3:35PM EST
Louise Theodon (French National Radioactive Waste Management Agency (ANDRA)), Erika Holt (VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland), Marcus Altmaier (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology), Nadia Mokni (ASNR), Sergey Churakov (Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI)), Stéphane Brassinnes (Belgian Agency for Radioactive Waste and Enriched Fissile Materials (ONDRAF/NIRAS))
Paper
Integrated Methodology for Swiss HLW Repository Optimization
3:35–3:55PM EST
Efstathios Vlassopoulos (Nagra), Irina Gaus (Nagra), Andreas Poller (CSD Engineers AG)
DOE Spent Nuclear Fuel Center for Applied Research
3:55–4:15PM EST
Steven Vitto (Department Of Energy), Paul E. Cantonwine (Oak Ridge National Laboratory), Gordon M. Petersen (Idaho National Laboratory), Richard Wyrwas (Savannah River National Laboratory), Mychailo Toloczko (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory), Paul A. Murray (DOE Office of Nuclear Energy)
Deliberation as Technocratic Framing?: The Case of France's CNDP and HLW Governance
4:15–4:35PM EST
Yunhee Choi (Tampere University)
Managing Nuclear Waste in the Era of Advanced Reactor Technologies
4:35–4:55PM EST
Rebecca TADESSE (OECD Nuclear Energy Agency), Una Baker (University of Wisconsin - Madison), Tatiana Ivanova, Gabriele Grassi (AREVA NP, Inc.), Oliver Buss (OECD Nuclear Energy Agency), Ville A. Tulkki, Charles Bory (OECD Nuclear Energy Agency)
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