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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.
S. Imagawa, T. Mito, K. Takahata, S. Yamada, N. Yanagi, H. Chikaraishi, R. Maekawa, H. Tamura, A. Iwamoto, S. Hamaguchi, T. Obana, T. Okamura, Y. Shirai, T. Ise, T. Hamajima, LHD Experiment Group
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 58 | Number 1 | July-August 2010 | Pages 560-570
Chapter 12. Superconducting Magnet System | Special Issue on Large Helical Device (LHD) | doi.org/10.13182/FST10-A10843
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Large Helical Device (LHD) is one of the world's largest superconducting systems. It consists of a pair of pool-cooled helical coils, three pairs of forced-flow-cooled poloidal coils, nine superconducting bus lines, a helium liquefier and refrigerator of 10-kW class, and six dc power supplies. Its stored magnetic energy reaches 0.8 GJ. Availability higher than 99% has been achieved in the long-term continuous operation since the first cooldown in February 1998 owing to the robustness of the systems and to efforts of maintenance and operation. One major problem is shortage of cryogenic stability of the helical coil conductor due to the slow current diffusion into a thick pure aluminum stabilizer. To improve its cryogenic stability by lowering the temperature, a subcooling system was installed before the tenth cooldown. The outlet temperature of the coil was successfully lowered to 3.8 K from 4.4 K of the saturated temperature, and its operation current was increased to 11.6 kA from 11.0 kA. These experiences of modification, maintenance, and operation should be useful for next large superconducting systems.