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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.
T. Okamura, K. Katayama, K. Imaoka, Y. Uchida, M. Nishikawa, S. Fukada
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 52 | Number 3 | October 2007 | Pages 645-648
Technical Paper | First Wall, Blanket, and Shield | doi.org/10.13182/FST07-A1562
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The erosion of carbon deposition layers by oxygen exposure and the desorpstion of hydrogen retained in the layers were investigated experimentally. Carbon deposition layers were formed by a sputtering method using hydrogen RF plasma. The layers were exposed to an argon gas with oxygen of 1013 Pa in the temperature range of 200-400°C. The erosion reaction progressed quickly within 10 minutes and then decelerated rapidly. The measurement of the outlet concentration revealed that most of the layer was eroded not as carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide but as soot. Additionally, it was estimated that the soot was released from the carbon deposition layer with a large amount of hydrogen.
