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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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!
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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.
Young-Jin Kim, Sang-Tae Kim, Dong-Seok Im, Nam-Yong Jung, Yaung-Su Kim, Seong-Yeon Yoo
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 64 | Number 2 | August 2013 | Pages 357-361
Safety, Environment, and Tritium Handling | 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-A18103
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the cooling water system (CWS), being infrastructure for large research facility, one of the important issues is the operation reliability, and then the minimizing of operation and maintenance costs. For optimum design, we studied the cooling loops for pulse and continuous operations of clients, volume and inside piping structure of storage tanks, two-step heat exchanger, safety devices and energy conservational operation of the CWS. During commissioning, the flow rate shortage due to increase of pump head by rise of client pressure drop was resolved as the operation of a stand by pump. The unexpected water pressure hunting occurred at an ion cyclotron ranges of frequency (ICRF) inlet port was stabilized by exchange of the starting system of motor and transfer of a constant flow rate valve from the water outlet port to the inlet port of the ICRF. We confirm that a polishing system, a first neutral beam injection cooling loop and a plasma facing component baking system can be stably operated in the upgrade step of clients. To improve the coefficient of performance and stability of operation in chiller, we will develop the new header, decreasing the gap of inlet temperature of cooling towers.
