ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
Standards Program
The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
Latest Magazine Issues
Sep 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
September 2025
Nuclear Technology
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. A. Henderson, R. Chavan, R. Bertizzolo, D. Campbell, J. Duron, F. Dolizy, R. Heidinger, J.-D. Landis, G. Saibene, F. Sanchez, A. Serikov, H. Shidara, P. Spaeh
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 53 | Number 1 | January 2008 | Pages 139-158
Technical Paper | Special Issue on Electron Cyclotron Wave Physics, Technology, and Applications - Part 2 | doi.org/10.13182/FST08-A1661
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The front steering (FS) launcher is one of two concepts that have been considered for the ITER electron cyclotron heating upper launcher by the European Union. During the development of a detailed conceptual design, the team involved with the FS launcher project listed all of the critical issues associated with installing an FS launcher in the ITER upper port, and then work was concentrated on providing a solution to each of the critical design issues. A similar procedure was performed for the alternative launcher option (remote steering launcher). These actions helped the ITER International Team evaluate the two systems and then choose a final optimum launcher. This evaluation occurred at the end of 2005, with both systems having equivalent reliability, but the FS offered significant enhancement in the physics performance. These differences led ITER-IT to select the FS launcher as the reference design. The goal of this paper is to provide a generalized review of the critical design issues and their solutions as they pertain to the FS launcher. In addition, the overall design and performance of the FS launcher is given along with a brief description of an extended performance launcher design that relaxes the engineering constraints, while increasing the physics capabilities.
