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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.
L. C. Cadwallader
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 52 | Number 4 | November 2007 | Pages 1017-1021
Technical Paper | Tritium, Safety, and Environment | doi.org/10.13182/FST07-A1628
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In nuclear facilities, there are two primary aspects of occupational safety. The first aspect is radiological safety, which has rightly been treated in detail in nuclear facilities. Radiological exposure data have been collected from the existing tokamaks to serve as forecasts for ITER radiation safety. The second aspect of occupational safety, "traditional" industrial safety, must also be considered for a complete occupational safety program. Industrial safety data on occupational injury rates from the JET and TFTR tokamaks, three accelerators, and U.S. nuclear fission plants have been collected to set industrial safety goals for the ITER operations staff. The results of this occupational safety data collection and analysis activity are presented here. The data show that an annual lost workday case rate of 0.3 incidents per 100 workers is a conceivable goal for ITER operations.
