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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.
M. H. Key, R. R. Freeman, S. P. Hatchett, A. J. MacKinnon, P. K. Patel, R. A. Snavely, R. B. Stephens
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 49 | Number 3 | April 2006 | Pages 440-452
Technical Paper | Fast Ignition | doi.org/10.13182/FST06-A1160
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Fast ignition by a laser-generated, ballistically focused proton plasma jet is a more recently proposed alternative to the original concept of fast ignition by a laser-generated beam of relativistic electrons. It has potential advantages in less-complex energy transport into dense plasma but has been investigated only at a preliminary level. Recent successful target heating experiments motivate further investigation of its feasibility. The concept and requirements, the characteristics of the proton plasma jets, the recent experimental work on focusing the jets and heating solid targets, and the overall physics constraints and unresolved questions are discussed.
