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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.
George E. Orient, Nasr M. Ghoniem
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 10 | Number 3 | November 1986 | Pages 1617-1622
Solid Breeder Blanket | doi.org/10.13182/FST86-A24963
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Mechanical interaction between the solid breeder material and its cladding during power cycles is an important consideration in the design of solid breeder blankets. The analysis presented in the paper gives a design tool for material choices and lifetime prediction for breeder pins. The UCLA solid breeder blanket design is evaluated, and operating conditions are suggested. The material model for the pellet includes linear thermoelastic behavior and swelling. The cladding is assumed to be thin and to exhibit swelling and creep. Two alternate breeder/cladding material pairs have been analyzed, a Li2O/2.25Cr-1Mo and a LiAlO2/9-C design. While high swelling excludes the Li2O/2.25Cr-1Mo design, it is found that in the LiAlO2/9-C case compatibility of thermal expansion between the breeder and the cladding as well as low swelling of the breeder result in less than 0.5% total plastic strain after one year of operation.
