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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. E. Sawan, M. W. McGeoch, A. Ibrahim, P. Wilson
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 52 | Number 4 | November 2007 | Pages 938-942
Technical Paper | Inertial Fusion Technology: Drivers and Advanced Designs | doi.org/10.13182/FST07-A1614
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the HAPL program,power plant designs are assessed with targets driven by 40 KrF laser beams. The final optics system that focuses the laser onto the target may include a grazing incidence metallic mirror (GIMM) located at 24 m from the target with 85 ° angle of incidence. The GIMM is in direct line of sight of the target and has a 50 micron thick aluminum coating. Two options were considered for the substrate material; SiC and AlBeMet. The impact of the GIMM design options on the nuclear environment at the dielectric focusing and turning mirrors was assessed. Using AlBeMet results in about a factor of two higher neutron flux. We considered beam duct configuration modifications such as utilizing neutron traps to reduce radiation streaming. In addition, we investigated the impact of lining the beam ducts and neutron traps with different materials that help slowing down and absorbing neutrons.
