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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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.
M. M. Günther, J. Schütrumpf, A. Britz, K. Vogt, K. Sonnabend, M. Roth
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 61 | Number 1 | January 2012 | Pages 231-236
Fusion-Fission Hybrids and Transmutation | Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Emerging Nuclear Energy Systems | doi.org/10.13182/FST12-A13425
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We present a novel nuclear activation-based method for the investigation of high-energy photons and electron dynamics within the laser-plasma interaction zone. This method is based on high density activation targets which are a pseudoalloy of several selected isotopes with different photo-neutron disintegration reaction thresholds. The gamma decay spectrum emitted by the activated target is used for the reconstruction of the bremsstrahlung spectrum generated by the electrons. This allows for the reconstruction of the spectrum of bremsstrahlung photons without any anticipated fit procedures. Furthermore, the characterization of the electrons in the interaction zone is accessible immediately.The consolidated findings about the interaction mechanisms could be used to realize, control and characterize laser driven particle generation, such as a pulsed neutron source for nuclear and material sciences using special target designs and materials in a pseudoalloic compound of isotopes. An additional application is the laser assisted nuclear transmutation to produce short-lived isotopes with activities suitable for medical diagnostics and therapy.
