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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.
Glen R. Longhurst, Alex Kratville
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 66 | Number 3 | November 2014 | Pages 385-393
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-801
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A simple laboratory experiment was constructed to demonstrate in a classroom setting hydrogen permeation under conditions typical of some nuclear applications. The goal was to allow students to find both solubility and diffusivity parameters for hydrogen moving through commercial stainless steel tubing. The purpose of the present work is to compare test results from this laboratory experiment with results from others to validate the experiment. Hydrogen mixed with argon was admitted to a heated test chamber containing a coiled Type 316 stainless steel tube. Pure argon sweep gas was passed through the tube to a process-gas mass spectrometer where composition transients of pertinent gas species were recorded. Fits of a theoretical transient model to the experimental data gave values of both diffusivity and solubility of hydrogen in the stainless steel tube. Tests were conducted at hydrogen partial pressures ranging from 1.7 to 83 kPa and tube temperatures from 636 to 770 K. The form of the permeation transient data was fit well by a classical theoretical model. Observed values of diffusivity and solubility of hydrogen in the stainless steel from these transients were similar to literature values with some notable differences. Evidence of permeation delay due to interference by the diluting Ar was observed. Limitations of the experimental system are discussed.
