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.
Y. Kamada, T. Fujita, S. Ishida, M. Kikuchi, S. Ide, T. Takizuka, H. Shirai, Y. Koide, T. Fukuda, N. Hosogane, K. Tsuchiya, T. Hatae, H. Takenaga, M. Sato, H. Nakamura, O. Naito, N. Asakura, H. Kubo, S. Higashijima, Y. Miura, R. Yoshino, K. Shimizu, T. Ozeki, T. Hirayama, M. Mori, Y. Sakamoto, Y. Kawano, A. Isayama, K. Ushigusa, Y. Ikeda, H. Kimura, T. Fujii, T. Imai, M. Nagami, S. Takeji, T. Oikawa, T. Suzuki, T. Nakano, N. Oyama, S. Sakurai, S. Konoshima, T. Sugie, K. Tobita, T. Kondoh, H. Tamai, Y. Neyatani, A. Sakasai, Y. Kusama, K. Itami, M. Shimada, H. Ninomiya, H. Urano
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 42 | Number 2 | September-November 2002 | Pages 185-254
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST02-A227
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Fusion plasma performance and confinement studies on JT-60 and JT-60U are reviewed. With the main aim of providing a physics basis for ITER and the steady-state tokamak reactors, JT-60/JT-60U has been developing and optimizing the operational concepts, and extending the discharge regimes toward sustainment of high integrated performance in the reactor relevant parameter regime. In addition to achievement of high fusion plasma performances such as the equivalent breakeven condition (QDTeq up to 1.25) and a high fusion triple product nD(0)ETi(0) = 1.5 × 1021 m-3skeV, JT-60U has demonstrated the integrated performance of high confinement, high N, full non-inductive current drive with a large fraction of bootstrap current. These favorable performances have been achieved in the two advanced operation regimes, the reversed magnetic shear (RS) and the weak magnetic shear (high-p) ELMy H modes characterized by both internal transport barriers (ITB) and edge transport barriers (ETB). The key factors in optimizing these plasmas towards high integrated performance are control of profiles of current, pressure, rotation, etc. utilizing a variety of heating, current drive, torque input, and particle control capabilities and high triangularity operation. As represented by discovery of ITBs (density ITB in the central pellet mode, ion temperature ITB in the high-p mode, and electron temperature ITB in the reversed shear mode), confinement studies in JT-60/JT-60U have been emphasizing freedom and also restriction of radial profiles of temperature and density. In addition to characterization of confinement and analyses of transport properties of the OH, the L-mode, the H-mode, the pellet mode, the high-p mode, and the RS mode, JT-60U has clarified formation conditions, spatial structures and dynamics of edge and internal transport barriers, and evaluated effects of repetitive MHD events on confinement such as sawteeth and ELMs. Through these studies, JT-60U has demonstrated applicability of the high confinement modes to ITER and the steady-state tokamak reactors.
