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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.
G. L. Kulcinski et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 64 | Number 2 | August 2013 | Pages 373-378
Alternate Concepts/Applications | 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/FST12-576
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has conducted research on gridded inertial electrostatic confinement (IEC) devices for the past 18 years. There are currently 4 experimental devices operating at voltages up to 180 kV and 60 mA. These devices have uncovered several new phenomena that have greatly improved our understanding of IEC devices. Recent advances include the discovery of a significant negative ion component of DD plasmas and spatial profiles of fusion reactions that did not conform to our prior understanding of these devices. The use of this technology has also contributed to our understanding of surface damage to high temperature in-vessel W components after even low exposures to energetic He ion fluences. Expansion of the voltage-ion current parameter space to 300 kV-200 mA in the near future will help our understanding of advanced fusion fuel cycles.
