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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.
Michiko Ichimasa et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 48 | Number 1 | July-August 2005 | Pages 759-762
Technical Paper | Tritium Science and Technology - Biology, Health, and Radiation | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A1031
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In order to eliminate atmospheric tritium gas (HT) released from tritium handling apparatus, we proposed to use the HT oxidizing ability (hydrogenase enzyme) of bacterial strains isolated from surface soils instead of a high temperature precious metal catalyst. Among the isolated strains with high HT oxidation activity, several strains were selected to develop a tritium elimination (detritiation) system. Bioreactors were made of bacterial cells grown on agar medium on a cartridge filter and stored in a refrigerator until use. The detritiation ability of these bioreactors at room temperature was investigated during the intentional HT release experiments carried out in the Cassion Assembly for Tritium Safety Study (CATS) in TPL/JAERI. When HT contaminated air from the CATS was introduced into the biological detritiation system, in which three bioreactors were connected in series, 86% of HT in air was removed as tritiated water in these bioreactors at a flow rate of 100 cm3/min for 2 hours.
