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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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.
L. El-Guebaly, T. Huhn, A. Rowcliffe, S. Malang, ARIES-ACT Team
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 64 | Number 3 | September 2013 | Pages 449-454
ARIES | Proceedings of the Twentieth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE-2012) (Part 2) Nashville, Tennessee, August 27-31, 2012 | doi.org/10.13182/FST64-449
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Research has been conducted to find the optimal steel to use in the vacuum vessel (VV) of ARIES power plants. The VV should meet several design criteria, including activation and fabrication requirements. Seven different types of steel were examined in order to determine which steel would be the best candidate for the ARIES VV. The main concerns are related to activation, properties under irradiation, and fabrication of a sizable VV. Steels generating high-level waste (such as 316-SS) were excluded from possible material choices. As a VV material, there is the necessity for a carefully controlled the post-weld-heat-treatment at ~750°C after assembly, welding, and rewelding. For this particular reason, the F82H FS is not suitable for the ARIES VV. The newly developed 3Cr-3WV bainitic FS meets the activation requirements and has the potential to satisfy the fabrication requirements for the ARIES VV. It is recommended for further consideration because of several advantages over other candidate steels.
