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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
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. H. Mills, J. D. Rader, D. L. Sadowski, S. I. Abdel-Khalik, M. Yoda
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 60 | Number 1 | July 2011 | Pages 190-196
Divertor & High Heat Flux Components | Proceedings of the Nineteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE) (Part 1) | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A12350
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The addition of fins to the cooled surface of gas-cooled divertor modules has been proposed as a means to enhance their thermal performance, in the HEMP concept, for example. Such fins enhance heat transfer by significantly increasing the surface area over which convection occurs. However, adding fins also increases pressure losses and manufacturing costs and can adversely affect coolant flow over the cooled surface. More importantly, the high heat transfer coefficients expected with helium (He) cooling may significantly lower the fin efficiency, thereby limiting the extent of heat transfer enhancement to values well below the increase in the area ratio. An experimental investigation was undertaken to quantify the extent of heat transfer enhancement and corresponding pressure loss increase associated with the addition of pin fins to the cooled surface of a modular, helium-cooled, finger-type divertor. Four test cases, including configurations similar to the HEMP and HEMJ concepts, were studied. The results show that the addition of fins to helium jet-cooled finger divertors may not provide enough heat transfer enhancement to justify the associated increases in design complexity and pressure loss. Generalized charts for the thermal performance of helium-cooled divertors have been developed; these allow the designers to estimate the maximum allowable heat flux and corresponding pressure drop for a specified set of operating conditions and maximum operating temperature.