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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.
D. W. Johnson, A. E. Costley
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 53 | Number 2 | February 2008 | Pages 751-759
Technical Paper | Plasma Diagnostics for Magnetic Fusion Research | doi.org/10.13182/FST08-A1685
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The physics basis for almost all the diagnostics planned for ITER is reasonably well in hand. However, the radiation environment near the ITER plasma creates unique challenges for diagnostic engineering. To illustrate this, we take a virtual tour of the ITER complex, beginning in the control room and diagnostic hall, where familiar components are configured much as they are in existing facilities. As we move more closely to the plasma, however, crossing into different zones for access and hazard confinement, the nuclear and plasma edge environment drives diagnostic designs in new directions, with new uncertainties. In each region, anticipated advances in supporting technology will be described, and new strategies for diagnostic implementation will be explained. The need for new standards of reliability will be highlighted, due to the difficulty of robotic maintenance and repair.