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.
M. Nematollahi, M. Rezaiean
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 61 | Number 1 | January 2012 | Pages 174-177
Fission | Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Emerging Nuclear Energy Systems | doi.org/10.13182/FST12-A13416
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Using natural circulation as the primary core cooling mechanism in next generation nuclear reactors provides advantages such as improved safety, less operation and maintenance costs (because of elimination of pumps), and simplicity of system. Large scale deployment of natural circulation based reactors and safety systems depend on the successful resolution of the challenges specific to natural circulation such as driving force, system pressure drops, instability effects, and critical heat flux.In this work, natural circulation two-phase flow pressure drops in a single channel are studied experimentally. For this purpose, natural circulation hydrodynamic loop was designed. The overall pressure drop was measured by use of pressure transducer sensors and the void fraction in visible boxes which located at the end of heated tube is measured by use of high speed camera. The frictional and acceleration pressure drop are evaluated in different conditions from experimental data and corresponding theoretical formulas. The results could be useful in natural circulation based reactor design and computer codes validation.
