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Fusion Science and Technology
August 2025
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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. Vezzoni et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 61 | Number 1 | January 2012 | Pages 155-160
Fission | Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Emerging Nuclear Energy Systems | doi.org/10.13182/FST12-A13413
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Traditionally the analysis of the evolution of severe core disruptive accidents (CDA) is broken down into different phases. This is mainly done for a better focussing on the key phenomena of the accident phase and also allows the application of specific codes for the analysis. In the current paper we mainly deal with the initiating phase and the transition phase of an accident as the ULOF (unprotected loss of flow). The key phenomenon of the initiating phase is the start of boiling and the development of voiding; key phenomena of the transition phase are the progression of core melting and the occurence of recriticalities by fuel compaction. The first level of optimizing safety is oriented to the initiating phase by reducing the positive void worth in order to avoid that a ULOF accident would enter a severe development.If accident prevention is not achieved the transition phase, characterized by a progressive core degradation leading to the occurrence of recriticalities, can be mitigated by dedicated features that enhance and guarantee a sufficient and timely fuel discharge - e.g. by a controlled material relocation (CMR) - and influence and `brake'; the recriticality path.In the paper both phases are analyzed. The results presented are in agreement with the activities performed within the European Collaborative CP-ESFR project.
