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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.
Jihong Chen, Liping Guo, Fengfeng Luo, Tiecheng Li, Yaoyao Ren, Jinping Suo
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 66 | Number 2 | October 2014 | Pages 301-307
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST13-714
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Single-beam (He+ or H+) and sequential-beam (He+/H+ or H+/He+) irradiation of reduced-activation martensitic steels at 450°C was carried out to investigate helium/hydrogen synergistic effects on the microstructure of the steels. After helium implantation, a very low density of helium bubbles was observed. No void was observed after hydrogen implantation. For the He+/H+ sequential-beam irradiation, the number density of bubbles increased rapidly at low hydrogen dose, and the average size of bubbles increased at higher hydrogen dose. Helium bubbles were also found in the H+/He+ sequential-beam irradiated specimen, but its swelling was smaller than that for the He+/H+ sequential conditions. It was concluded that the effect of hydrogen atoms on the nucleation and growth of bubbles may enhance the diffusion of helium-atom/helium-vacancy clusters. Hydrogen irradiation after helium irradiation can increase the nucleation and growth of helium bubbles, while helium bubbles may enhance the retention of hydrogen atoms to form He-H-vacancy complexes.
