ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
Standards Program
The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
Latest Magazine Issues
Sep 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
September 2025
Nuclear Technology
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.
P. R. Goncharov, T. Ozaki, S. Sudo, N. Tamura, D. V. Kalinina, Tespel Group, LHD Experimental Group, E. A. Veshchev, V. Yu. Sergeev
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 50 | Number 2 | August 2006 | Pages 222-228
Technical Paper | Stellarators | doi.org/10.13182/FST06-A1239
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
First radially resolved local data on the ion distribution function have been obtained on the Large Helical Device (LHD) from measurements of escaping neutral particle energy spectra by using an impurity pellet ablation cloud as a spatially localized target for the charge exchange with plasma ions. The active diagnostic employs a transversely directed injector of solid pellets and a compact high-resolution neutral particle energy spectrometer capable of observing the ablation cloud throughout the pellet flight across the plasma column. The paper describes the experimental method and presents the initial measurement results. The data analysis is discussed with emphasis on the local ion distribution calculation from the pellet charge-exchange neutral spectra, taking into account the pellet trajectory, the cloud parameters, and the relevant electron capture and stripping cross sections. The estimated carbon/hydrogen ablation cloud neutralization fraction is used for the interpretation of the neutral spectra from tangential neutral beam injection-heated plasmas and from ion cyclotron heating-sustained plasmas.
