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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. Sawan, L. El-Guebaly, P. Wilson
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 52 | Number 4 | November 2007 | Pages 763-770
Technical Paper | Nuclear Analysis and Experiments | doi.org/10.13182/FST07-A1582
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Detailed three-dimensional nuclear analyses have been carried out for the chamber of a power plant concept that utilizes the Z-Pinch driven inertial confinement technology with a target yield of 3 GJ and repetition rate of 0.1 Hz per chamber. The elliptical chamber concept was modeled with the double-layered Recyclable Transmission Lines (RTL). Thick liquid jets are utilized to breed tritium, absorb energy, and shield the chamber wall. Two liquid breeder options were considered; the molten salt Flibe and the LiPb eutectic (Li17Pb83). The chamber wall is made of the low activation ferritic steel alloy F82H. While both breeders have the potential for achieving tritium self-sufficiency, the thermal power is ~6.5% higher with LiPb. However, a 55% thicker jet zone is required with LiPb to provide adequate chamber wall shielding. A thicker chamber wall is required with LiPb to reduce the nuclear energy leakage below 1%. The chamber wall does not need replacement except for the top part around the jet nozzles. Helium production in the chamber wall protected by LiPb is much lower than that with Flibe. Rewelding is possible only in the lower part of chamber wall below the pool.
