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Fusion Science and Technology
August 2025
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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.
Kwang-Il You, Deok Kyo Lee
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 43 | Number 4 | June 2003 | Pages 514-521
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST03-A298
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A simple one-dimensional analytic formulation is developed for approximate determination of the preload force that must be applied by tie-rods and/or tie-plates for a multimodule central solenoid coil assembly in tokamak devices. The primary purpose of the preload is to ensure that vertical tensile stress does not develop between any two adjacent module coils within the assembly. The absence of the tensile force is a minimal requirement needed to prevent lateral movements of the coils, when friction is the sole means available. An excessive preload, on the other hand, can damage insulation and conductor jackets. The analysis is based on a model system in which the vertical motion of the coil winding is described through representation of the coil conductors and tie-rods/-plates with linear springs. The coupled spring system is represented by a system of simultaneous linear equations, which is solved analytically to obtain the compression force at each spring in terms of the applied preload, electromagnetic forces on the springs, and spring constants. Although this procedure lacks the rigor of complex two- or three-dimensional analyses, it is expected to be able to play some useful role.