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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.
S. V. Chernitskiy, V. E. Moiseenko, K. Noack, O. Ågren
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 63 | Number 1 | May 2013 | Pages 322-324
doi.org/10.13182/FST13-A16942
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The MCNPX numerical code has been used to model the neutron transport in a mirror based fusion-fission reactor. The purpose is to find a principal design of the fission mantle which fits to the neutron source and to calculate the leakage of neutrons through the mantle surface of the fission reactor.The fission reactor part has a cylindrical shape with an outer radius 1.66 m and a 4 m length. The fuel has the isotopic composition of the spent nuclear fuel from PWR after uranium-238 removal. Inside the fission reactor core is a vacuum chamber with a radius 0.5 m containing a 4 m long hot plasma producing fusion neutrons. To sustain the hot ion plasma which is responsible for the fusion neutron production, neutral beam injection is considered.Calculation results for the radial leakage of neutrons through the mantle surface of the fission reactor are presented. These calculations predict that the power released with neutrons from the reactor to outer space would be small and will not exceed the value of 6 kW while the reactor thermal power is 1 GWth.
