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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.
J. Vega, E. Sánchez, A. Portas, A. Pereira, A. López, E. Ascasíbar, S. Balme, Y. Buravand, P. Lebourg, J. M. Theis, N. Utzel, M. Ruiz, E. Barrera, S. López, D. Machón, R. Castro, D. López, A. Mollinedo, J. A. Muñoz
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 50 | Number 3 | October 2006 | Pages 464-471
Technical Paper | Stellarators | doi.org/10.13182/FST06-A1270
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The TJ-II remote participation system was designed to follow the TJ-II discharge production, even allowing the physicist in charge of operations to be in a remote location. The system has been based on both Web servers and Java technology. These elements were chosen for their open character, security properties, platform independence, and technological maturity. Web pages and Java applications permit users to access experimental systems, data servers, and the operation logbook. Security resources are provided by the PAPI system, a distributed authentication and authorization system.The TJ-II remote participation tools have allowed us to command and follow the stellarator operation from Cadarache. More than 1000 digitizer channels and more than 20 diagnostic control systems were remotely accessed from Web pages for monitoring/programming purposes. One Java application provided online information about the acquisition status of channels and acquisition cards. A second Java application showed temporal evolution signals that were refreshed in an automated way on the screen after each shot. A third Java application provided access to the operation logbook. In addition to these tools, we used the VRVS (virtual room videoconferencing system) (FUSION community, X-Point room) and the EFDA (European Fusion Development Agreement) Messenger Service for instant messaging (Jabber client).
