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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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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.
2022 ANS Winter Meeting and Technology Expo Speaker
Jess Gehin became associate laboratory director for INL’s Nuclear Science & Technology (NS&T) Directorate in March 2021 after serving as chief scientist for the directorate since 2018. Over his 28-year career, he has built national strategies and priorities for nuclear energy, led complex projects and organizations, and developed strong relationships with senior leaders within INL, DOE and federal sponsors, and other laboratories, companies, and universities. In support of the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy, he served as the national technical director for the DOE Microreactor Program. He expanded NS&T’s strategic direction and helped develop and establish key projects to build advanced reactors at INL, such as the Department of Defense’s demonstration microreactor Project Pele, and the Microreactor Applications Research Validation and Evaluation (MARVEL) Project. Previously, he held research and leadership positions at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in nuclear reactor core physics, reactor core and system technologies, reactor modeling and simulation, and fuel cycle reactor applications. While at ORNL, he served as director of the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors. He earned a bachelor’s degree in nuclear engineering from Kansas State University, and master’s and doctoral degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His was an associate professor at the University of Tennessee, is a Fellow of the American Nuclear Society, and has authored or co-authored more than 120 refereed journal and conference articles, technical reports, and conference summaries.
Last modified October 3, 2022, 11:59am MST
