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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.
T. D. Bohm, M. E. Sawan, P. P. H. Wilson
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 64 | Number 3 | September 2013 | Pages 587-591
Nuclear Systems: Analysis and Experiments | 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-A19156
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
ITER blanket modules (BMs) are arranged around the plasma to provide thermal and nuclear shielding for the vacuum vessel, magnets and other external components. Detailed mapping of nuclear heating, radiation damage, and helium production is an essential input to the design process. During initial investigation of a BM design, some simplifications of the BM may be needed. Nuclear heating was determined for four CAD based models of the BM04 region (located at the inboard mid-plane) including 1) a detailed 3-D geometry with a detailed 3-D source, 2) a detailed 3-D geometry with a uniformly distributed source, 3) a homogenized 3-D geometry with a detailed 3-D source, and, 4) a homogenized 3-D geometry with a uniformly distributed source. The results show that the impact of using homogenized models is larger than that of using a uniformly distributed source. These results are being incorporated into the BM design process by using more detail in homogenized models when detailed CAD based models are not available.
