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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.
Kuo Tian, Frederik Arbeiter, Volker Heinzel, Keitaro Kondo, Martin Kubaschewski, Martin Mittwollen, Anton Möslang
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 66 | Number 1 | July-August 2014 | Pages 245-251
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST13-758
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
As the core region of IFMIF, the test cell (TC) suffers intense neutron and gamma irradiations. Major material challenges of the TC faced during engineering design phase are outlined and the current key material allocations are described. Actively cooled magnetite concrete is selected as the major biological shielding material for the TC, and actively cooled closed liner made of 316L stainless steel is selected to cover the complete TC internal surfaces. Material selections for sealing gaskets and electric insulations inside the TC are preliminarily defined based on dose rate maps at different locations. Metal based sealing gaskets and glass/ceramic electric insulations are applied in the areas with high dose rate, while organic based gaskets and conventional insulation materials can only be arranged behind sufficient biological shielding. Leak tight welding seams between removable interface shielding plugs and the TC liner are located in the region with very low helium generation rate (≪0.01 appm/fpy) in steel so that cutting and re-welding during the complete IFMIF life span is guaranteed.
