ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
Standards Program
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Sep 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
September 2025
Nuclear Technology
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.
S. K. Combs et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 64 | Number 3 | September 2013 | Pages 513-520
Fusion Technologies: Heating and Fueling | 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/FST13-A19144
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A compact pellet injector has been built/tested at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) for the TJ-II stellarator. The design is an upgraded version of that used for the ORNL injector installed on the Madison Symmetric Torus (MST). It is a four-barrel system equipped with a cryogenic refrigerator for in situ hydrogen pellet formation, a propellant valve system for pellet acceleration (speeds ~1000 m/s), pellet diagnostics, and an injection line. On TJ-II, it will be used as an active diagnostic and for fueling. To accommodate the plasma experiments planned for TJ-II, pellet sizes significantly smaller than those used for the MST application are required. The system has been initially equipped with four pellet sizes, with the gun barrel bores ranging between 0.4 and 1.0 mm. The most challenging technical issue is achieving reliable operation with the smallest pellet size. The system is described, highlighting the new features added since the original MST injector was constructed. Results from laboratory testing are presented and discussed, including the range of pellet sizes and speeds that will be available for initial experiments on TJ-II and the expected reliability of delivering intact pellets to the plasmas.
