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Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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.
B. Grant Logan, Roger O. Bangerter, Debra A. Callahan, Max Tabak, Markus Roth, L. John Perkins, George Caporaso
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 49 | Number 3 | April 2006 | Pages 399-411
Technical Paper | Fast Ignition | doi.org/10.13182/FST06-A1158
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Critical issues and ion beam requirements are explored for fast ignition using ion beams to provide fuel compression using indirect drive and to provide separate short-pulse ignition heating using direct drive. Several ion species with different hohlraum geometries are considered for both accelerator-produced and laser-produced ion ignition beams. Ion-driven fast ignition targets are projected to have modestly higher gains than with conventional heavy ion fusion and may offer some other advantages for target fabrication and for use of advanced fuels. However, much more analysis and additional experiments are needed before conclusions can be drawn regarding the feasibility for meeting the ion beam transverse and longitudinal emittances, focal spots, pulse lengths, and target standoff distances required for ion-driven fast ignition.
