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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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.
Lihua Zhou, Rui Vieira, Soren Harrison, Dan Karnes, Bruce Lipschultz
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 64 | Number 2 | August 2013 | Pages 293-297
Divertor and High-Heat-Flux Components | Proceedings of the Twentieth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE-2012) (Part 1), Nashville, Tennessee, August 27-31, 2012 | doi.org/10.13182/FST13-A18092
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To design the Alcator C-Mod outer divertor to operate at 600°C and determine its effect on the surrounding vessel and diagnostics, heat transfer analysis must be performed. This paper describes the analysis and the results of heat transfer simulations of the outer divertor tiles, tile-mounting plate, support structure, and current shunt. Using Comsol, commercial FEA software package, a 3D wedge model that exploits the cyclic symmetry of the divertor, is created. By adjusting the power level of each of the 7 heaters used to elevate and control the divertor temperature, a uniform poloidal temperature distribution is achieved and the power requirements for the heaters are determined. The temperature of each component in the assembly is calculated, and results are used for further design changes. Additionally, radiation simulation on thermal shields are presented, which is used as ambient temperature for the heat transfer of the A-frame assembly. Furthermore, a full model of the entire outer divertor ring is presented with its toroidal temperature distribution. Finally, thermal stress of the plate is analyzed besides an analytical calculation of the maximum allowable temperature difference.
