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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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.
Alice Ying, Haibo Liu, Mohamed Abdou
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 64 | Number 2 | August 2013 | Pages 303-308
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/FST64-303
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Available data and mathematical formulations concerning tritium transport in the FW/Divertor with tungsten and beryllium as plasma facing materials were implemented in the commercial code COMSOL Multiphysics. The goal is to develop a CAD-based multiphysics modeling capability so that FW/Divertor temperature and geometric features can be readily taken into consideration while tritium permeation to the primary coolant in a prototypical PFC can be more realistically addressed. This development began with the simulation of ion implantation experiments, validated against existing laboratory experimental results. Analysis shows that with ITER FW where Be is used as the plasma facing material, the low operating temperature, erosion, and the dwell time greatly hinder tritium bulk diffusion, permeation, and inventory accumulation. However, under DEMO high-temperature operating conditions, tritium can quickly diffuse through tungsten to structural material and reach a steady state inventory after a relatively short time. Additionally, its permeation to the coolant can be reduced when the Soret effect is considered. The findings and challenges of developing a 3-D predictive capability for tritium transport in a FW/Divertor PFC are discussed.
