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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.
S. Sakakibara, K. Y. Watanabe, H. Yamada, Y. Narushima, T. Yamaguchi, K. Toi, S. Ohdachi, A. Weller, K. Tanaka, K. Narihara, K. Ida, T. Tokuzawa, K. Kawahata, A. Komori, LHD Experimental Group
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 50 | Number 2 | August 2006 | Pages 177-185
Technical Paper | Stellarators | doi.org/10.13182/FST06-A1233
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper describes recent progress in magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) study of high-beta plasmas of the Large Helical Device. Control of the plasma aspect ratio (Ap) in the range of 6.3 to 8.3 was done in order to optimize the configuration for high-beta plasma production and to investigate the MHD characteristics. The experiments brought a maximum average beta of 4.3% at the Ap = 6.6 configuration. MHD activities in the periphery are dominantly observed in such a high-beta region, and their amplitudes increase with decreasing magnetic Reynolds number (S) and have clear dependence on the S parameter. When the plasma aspect ratio is increased, minor collapse due to the m/n = 1/1 mode without rotation occurs. It is enhanced further by the plasma current reducing magnetic shear and degrades the beta value by >50%. The results are expected to give important information on the operation regime and the future design of the helical fusion reactor and to contribute to experimental knowledge of ideal and resistive instability.
