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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.
Nobuyuki Asakura, Takao Hayashi, Naoko Ashikawa, Takaki Hatae, Tomokide Nakano
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 60 | Number 4 | November 2011 | Pages 1572-1575
Interaction with Materials | Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Tritium Science and Technology (Part 2) | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A12734
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Distribution of carbon dust in the plasma discharges was measured, and sublimation of dust was dominant in the scrape-off layer (SOL). Dust collection in the vacuum vessel was performed after the experiment campaign, and the analysis showed that both weight and number of dust were large at the exhaust route of the deuterium gas under the divertor structure. Microscope analysis showed that small dust group (less than 20 m) had a statistical population, and that large dusts (larger than 20 m) contributed significantly to the total weight. Understanding of the properties of both small and large dusts is important to evaluate surface area for determination of fuel retention.
