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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.
I. A. Prokhorov et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 63 | Number 1 | May 2013 | Pages 349-351
doi.org/10.13182/FST13-A16951
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The ion source for along pulse operating diagnostic neutral beam injector has been developed. The ion source has to form an 8 A, 60 keV hydrogen ion beam. The ion source consists of an RF-plasma driver and a four grids ion-optical system. Both ion-optical system and plasma driver have an augmented water-cooling system. Geometry of the ion-optical system was optimized by the numerical simulations in order to achieve the minimal beam angular divergence. The performance of the developed water-cooling system of the ion source was numerically simulated. Design of the developed ion source and experimental and numerical simulations results are presented in the paper.
