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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.
Carlo Alvani, Sergio Casadio, Lorenzo Lorenzini, Giovanni Brambilla
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 10 | Number 1 | July 1986 | Pages 106-112
Technical Paper | Materials Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST86-A24751
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The gamma-LiAlO2 ceramic material is the reference candidate for the solid breeder option of the Next European Torus Program. The experiments and methodologies developed in Italy to produce high surface area gamma-LiAl02 powders to be compacted by cold pressing and sintering at 70 to 90% of the theoretical density, keeping a near fully open porosity is presented. The lithiating step was assessed for the Li2CO3 and Li2O2 precursors reacting with Al2O3 having submicron grain size. Sol-gel methodologies were also developed for the gamma-LiAlO2 preparation by which very high surface area ceramic grade powders were obtained.
