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.
B. K. Shukla, K. Sathyanarayana, D. Bora, Sanjay V. Kulkarni, Sampa Gangopadhyay, Y. S. S. Srinivas, P. L. Khilar, Mahesh Kushwah, R. G. Trivedi, S. Rajashree, Barnali Pal, Anil Bhardwaj, D. Rathi, B. R. Kadia, Ashish Patel, Chetan Virani, Harsida Patel, H. M. Jadav, K. G. Parmar, P. Shah, A. R. Makwana, Sunil Dani, P. Kirit, M. Harsha, J. Soni, RF Group
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 50 | Number 4 | November 2006 | Pages 551-560
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/FST06-A1279
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An electron cyclotron resonance heating system is commissioned on Aditya tokamak to carry out pre-ionization, start-up, and heating experiments. A high-power microwave source (gyrotron), capable of delivering 200-kW cw power at 28 ± 0.1 GHz, is commissioned successfully using a water dummy load for pulsed operation. The output mode of the gyrotron is TE02. The output power of the gyrotron is measured using microwave probe couplers, a spectrum analyzer, and calorimetric techniques. A hardwired interlock operates a rail-gap-based crowbar system in less than 10 s under fault condition and protects the gyrotron. The rail-gap crowbar operation has been qualified with the high-voltage power supply by performing a 10-J wire-burn test prior to energizing the gyrotron.A transmission line consisting of matching optic units, dc break, polarizer, miter bend, and corrugated waveguides terminates with a boron nitride window. The total attenuation in the line is measured to be less than 1.1 dB. Based on quasi-optical theory, a beam launcher is designed, fabricated, and tested for ultrahigh-vacuum compatibility prior to commissioning on tokamak.After successful operation of the gyrotron on the dummy load, the gyrotron output has been coupled to the ADITYA tokamak, and successful breakdown of neutral gas is observed without assistance from an ohmic transformer.
