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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.
R. Prater, C. C. Petty
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 48 | Number 2 | October 2005 | Pages 1141-1148
Technical Paper | DIII-D Tokamak - Radio-Frequency Heating and Current Drive | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A1066
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Electron cyclotron heating (ECH) has proved to be a very flexible system for heating applications in DIII-D. The outstanding characteristics of ECH - controllable heating location, a high degree of localization of the power, ability to heat without introducing particles, and ability to heat only the electron fluid - have been used in a wide variety of experiments to study wave physics and transport, to control magnetohydrodynamic activity, and to improve discharges. These characteristics along with relatively easy coupling to the plasma make ECH a valuable resource for both heating and instability control in burning plasmas.
