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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.
S. Masuzaki, N. Ashikawa, K. Nishimura, M. Tokitani, T. Hino, Y. Yamauchi, Y. Nobuta, N. Yoshida, M. Miyamoto, A. Sagara, N. Noda, H. Yamada, A. Komori, LHD Experiment Group
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 58 | Number 1 | July-August 2010 | Pages 297-304
Chapter 7. Plasmas-Wall Interactions | Special Issue on Large Helical Device (LHD) | doi.org/10.13182/FST10-A10816
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Wall conditioning in the Large Helical Device (LHD) has been conducted successively since the first experimental campaign in 1998. The effects of wall conditioning on the vacuum condition, the plasma performance, and the surface modification of the plasma-facing components have been analyzed by both macroscopic and microscopic observations such as residual gas analysis and transmission electron microscope observation, respectively. The main tools for the conditioning are mild baking (95°C); glow discharges with hydrogen, helium, and neon; and wall coating with titanium and boron. Though the baking temperature is lower than in other fusion devices, it reduces impurity gases well just after the start of vacuum pumping, and it reduces retained hydrogen in plasma-facing components during the experimental campaign. Helium glow discharge was revealed to cause heavy damage on the surfaces of metallic components and the contamination of the hydrogen discharges with helium released from wall. Neon glow discharge has been conducted since it causes much less damage and hastens the conditioning of the wall. Boronization is very effective to reduce oxygen impurity in plasma, and the effects last for the whole experimental campaign in LHD.