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Fusion Science and Technology
August 2025
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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.
W. J. G. Workman, S. B. Kim, T. G. Kotzer
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 48 | Number 1 | July-August 2005 | Pages 763-766
Technical Paper | Tritium Science and Technology - Biology, Health, and Radiation | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A1032
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The measurement of organically bound tritium in environmental samples is essential for assessing the impact of tritium releases in terms of doses to the general public and a growing number of laboratories are now required to make them. Interlaboratory comparisons provide one way for laboratories to practice and check their analytical methods and procedures. At AECL's Chalk River Laboratories, two organic matrices with tritium concentrations less than 1.5 kBq/g were developed and distributed to seven laboratories in Canada, Europe and Russia for measurement. Some participants experienced difficulties in analysing the samples, especially with the lower concentrations, where results varied by more than an order of magnitude. Laboratories incorporating procedures such as rinsing to remove tritium from exchangeable sites, using standardized combustion methods and purifying the combustion water obtained more reliable, consistent results. The preparation of the standard reference material must be carefully executed in order to produce a homogeneous sample of uniform size. The tritium measurement community would benefit if standard reference materials in the environmental concentration range were available.