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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.
N. G. Borisenko, I. V. Akimova, A. I. Gromov, A. M. Khalenkov, Yu. A. Merkuliev, V. N. Kondrashov, J. Limpouch, J. Kuba, E. Krousky, K. Masek, W. Nazarov, V. G. Pimenov
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 49 | Number 4 | May 2006 | Pages 676-685
Technical Paper | Target Fabrication | doi.org/10.13182/FST06-A1185
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Fabrication methods for low-density fine-structure (cell size < 1 m) 3-D networks of cellulose triacetate (TAC) are developed. Target densities ranged 4-20 mg/cm3, similar polymer structures were produced both with no load and with high-Z cluster dopant with concentration up to 30%. Foams of varying density down to 0.25 plasma critical density at the third harmonic of iodine laser wavelength are supplied for laser shots. Closed-cell and 3-D network structures are considered and monitored as the means of thermal and radiation control in plasma. In comparative foam-and-foil laser irradiation experiments on PALS (Czech, Prague) laser facility the presently developed TAC targets were used along with earlier reported TMPTA (trimethylol propane triacrilate) and agar foams. Radiation transport and hydrodynamic wave velocities proved to be similar in TAC and TMPTA volume structures both having the form of regular 3-D networks, but differed a lot when TAC was compared to agar foams. Radiation transport during laser pulse in TAC doped with Cu-clusters was faster then in TAC with no dopant, whereas plasma from TAC doped with Cu-clusters cooled down quicker then with no clusters. High-Z cluster dopant is effective tool to control energy transport in underdense plasma.