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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.
S. J. Diem, D. T. Fehling, D. L. Hillis, A. R. Horton, A. Nagy, R. I. Pinsker, E. A. Unterberg
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 64 | Number 3 | September 2013 | Pages 530-532
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-A19147
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Locating arcs within the fast wave current drive system is necessary to improve antenna performance and coupling to the plasma. Previously, there had been no way to observe arcs inside the vacuum vessel in an ICRF antenna on DIII-D. A new diagnostic that uses photomultiplier tubes has been installed for the 2012 run campaign on the 285/300 antenna of the fast wave system. The diagnostic has top and bottom views of the back of the four antenna straps and uses narrow-bandpass visible filters to isolate emission lines of copper (577 nm) and deuterium (656.1 nm). This diagnostic is based on the ORNL filterscope system currently in use on multiple devices. The system will be used to guide fast wave antenna conditioning, plasma operation and provide insight into future antenna upgrades on DIII-D.
