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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. A. London, J. D. Moody, J. J. Sanchez, J. D. Sater, B. J. Haid, D. N. Bittner
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 49 | Number 4 | May 2006 | Pages 581-587
Technical Paper | Target Fabrication | doi.org/10.13182/FST06-A1171
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Cryogenic inertial confinement fusion targets at the National Ignition Facility and the Laser Megajoule will be protected from thermal infrared radiation by a cold shroud. As the shroud is removed just before the laser pulse, infrared radiation will heat and possibly degrade the symmetry of the solid hydrogen fuel layer. A lumped component mathematical model has been constructed to calculate how long an indirect drive target can be exposed to thermal radiation before the fuel layer degrades. The allowed exposure time sets the maximum shroud removal time and therefore has important implications for the design of the cryogenic shroud systems. The model predicts that the maximum exposure time is approximately 0.18 s for plastic capsules inside hohlraums with transparent laser entrance holes. By covering the laser entrance holes with a partially reflective coating, the exposure time can be increased to approximately 1 s. The exposure time can be increased to about 2 s by using beryllium capsules. Several other design concepts could increase the exposure time even further. Lengthening of the allowed exposure time to 1 s or longer could allow a significant cost savings for the shroud system.
