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.
Kazunori Takahashi, Daiki Sato
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 63 | Number 1 | May 2013 | Pages 395-397
doi.org/10.13182/FST13-A16966
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
High density helicon plasma is produced by a 13.56 MHz rf discharge under an IGBT-pulsed expanding and strong magnetic field, where the compact solenoid (inner diameter of 10 cm and 616 turn) is used for the formation of the magnetic field. The solenoid current is pulsed by the IGBT device with a pulse width of 20-40 msec. The solenoid current and the resultant magnetic field strength are proportional to the charging voltage to the capacitor. In the presently used solenoid and circuit, the maximum current and the resultant field strength are about 56 A and 3 kGauss, respectively. For the rf power of about 700 W, the high density plasma of about 4 × 1012 cm-3 is achieved. Above the field strength of about 1.6 kGauss, the source plasma density is constant, while the downstream density increases due to the suppression of the radial loss of the plasma particles.
