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September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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.
J. F. Latkowski, S. Reyes, L. C. Cadwallader, J. P. Sharpe, T. D. Marshall, B. J. Merrill, R. L. Moore, D. A. Petti, R. Falquina, A. Rodriguez, J. Sanz, O. Cabellos
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 44 | Number 1 | July 2003 | Pages 34-40
Technical Paper | Fusion Energy - Fusion Plenary and Overview | doi.org/10.13182/FST03-A307
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Over the past several years, significant progress has been made in the analysis of safety and environmental (S&E) issues for inertial fusion energy (IFE). Detailed safety assessments have been performed for the baseline power plant concepts, as well as for a conceptual target fabrication facility. Safety analysis results are helping to drive the agenda for experiments. A survey of the S&E characteristics - both radiological and chemical - of candidate target materials has been completed. Accident initiating events have been identified and incorporated into master logic diagrams, which will be essential to the detailed safety analyses that will be needed in the future. Studies of aerosol generation and transport will have important safety implications. A Monte Carlo-based uncertainty analysis procedure has been developed for use in neutron activation calculations. Finally, waste management issues are receiving increased attention and are deserving of further discussion.
