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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.
M. Porton, J. Aktaa, C. Bachmann, P. Fernandez, M. Kalsey, T. Lebarbe, C. Petesch, W. Timmis
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 66 | Number 1 | July-August 2014 | Pages 18-27
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-781
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The verification of the structural components of demonstration fusion power plants requires design criteria developed specifically for those components and the unique conditions at which they are operated. Therefore the creation of a body of structural design criteria appropriate for demonstration fusion power plants is an important activity, with particular attention required for the in-vessel components of the divertor and blanket. For posited failure modes associated with the candidate in-vessel components for the current European Demonstration Power Plant design (EU DEMO), this paper highlights the gaps identified in the leading suites of relevant structural design criteria (ASME BPVC Division III, AFCEN RCC-MRx, ITER SDC-IC). Opportunities for innovative development are then explored for these gaps. Finally, a development path for structural design criteria against the needs of EU DEMO is discussed.
