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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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.
M. A. Sweeney, J. A. Halbleib, K. M. Tolk
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 10 | Number 3 | November 1986 | Pages 656-663
Inertial Confinement Fusion Driver Technology | Proceedings of the Seveth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Reno, Nevada, June 15–19, 1986) | doi.org/10.13182/FST86-A24817
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Sandia National Laboratories Particle Beam Fusion Accelerator PBFA II is expected to produce significant bremsstrahlung on every shot during 30 MV operation. Shielding specific electronic components from the intense bremsstrahlung environment is an important consideration. We describe new 3-D Monte Carlo electron-photon transport simulations of the PBFA-II facility that include a more efficient version of the next-event-estimator calculation and final design information for accelerator components within the vacuum chamber. The improved bremsstrahlung shielding analysis is compared with pin diode and thermoluminescent dosimetry measurements obtained during the first four months of accelerator testing.
