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.
K. Ushigusa, S. Ide, T. Oikawa, T. Suzuki, Y. Kamada, T. Fujita, Y. Ikeda, O. Naito, M. Matsuoka, T. Kondoh, A. Isayama, M. Seki, T. Imai, K. Sakamoto, N. Umeda, K. Hamamatsu, T. Fujii, K. Uehara, T. Yamamoto, Y. Miura, M. Kikuchi, M. Kuriyama, H. Ninomiya
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 42 | Number 2 | September-November 2002 | Pages 255-277
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST02-A228
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Studies on noninductive current drive (CD) and development of an integrated steady-state high performance operation in JT-60 are reviewed. Experiments on lower hybrid current drive (LHCD) in JT-60 have shown a large noninductive current up to 3.6 MA, high current drive efficiency of 3.5 × 1019 m-2A/W, and a flexible current profile control. Basic studies on LH waves, such as an effect of accessibility condition, fast electron behaviors, and so on, in JT-60 have contributed to understanding LHCD physics. Significant progress in neutral beam current drive (NBCD) has been made in JT-60 by testing the performance of negative ion-based (N) neutral beam injection (NBI) (N-NBI). The CD efficiency of ~1.5 × 1019 m-2A/W and negative ion-based neutral beam (N-NB) driven current of ~1 MA have been demonstrated in N-NBCD. Strongly localized noninductive driven current by electron cyclotron current drive (ECCD) was identified with a fundamental O-mode scheme from a low field side injection. ECCD in JT-60 has shown CD efficiency of 0.5 × 1019 m-2A/W and EC-driven current of 0.2 MA. Modification of local current profile was demonstrated and was used for suppression of neoclassical tearing mode. Based on these developments, two integrated steady-state operation scenarios were developed in JT-60, which are reversed magnetic shear (R/S) plasmas and high p ELMy H-mode. In these operation regimes, discharges have been sustained near the steady-state current profile under full noninductive current drive (High p; HHy2 ~ 1.4 and N ~ 2.5 with N-NB, R/S; HHy2 ~ 2.2 and N ~ 2 with fBS ~ 80%). High performance plasmas with a high nDoETio and at high normalized density were also produced under fully noninductive condition in high p ELMy H-mode and R/S mode.
