ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
Standards Program
The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
Latest Magazine Issues
Sep 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
September 2025
Nuclear Technology
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.
K. R. Schultz
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 44 | Number 2 | September 2003 | Pages 393-399
Technical Paper | Fusion Energy - Tritium and Safety and Environment | doi.org/10.13182/FST03-A366
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Hydrogen has captured the imagination of the technical community recently, with visions of improved energy security, reduced global warming, improved energy efficiency and reduced air pollution as potential benefits. A significant "Hydrogen Economy" is predicted that will reduce dependence on petroleum imports, and reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Such a hydrogen economy will need significant new sources of hydrogen. Virtually all our current hydrogen is produced from natural gas and is equivalent to 48 GW(t). Replacing this growing demand with a non-fossil, non-greenhouse gas emitting source represents a huge potential market for fusion.Hydrogen could potentially be produced from water using fusion energy by direct interaction of fusion products (charged particles, neutrons and gammas), and by electrolytic or thermochemical means. Significant effort was devoted to study of these possibilities in the 1970-80s. It is instructive to review these earlier studies today as interest in production of hydrogen is revived. Investigations into direct use of fusion products for radiolysis and "hot spot" chemistry found it was difficult to get much of the fusion energy into the reaction channels of interest. Use of fusion energy in heat-driven processes was more promising. Fusion blankets could give much higher temperatures than are possible from fission heat sources. Studies of high temperature electrolysis and thermochemical water splitting using this high temperature heat were promising. The requirement that fusion blankets breed tritium raises challenges, as the tolerance for tritium in the product hydrogen is extraordinarily low. Use of multiple coolant streams, multiple containment barriers and separate breeding and high temperature zones were proposed that appear to successfully address these concerns, but add complication. Fusion does have the potential to support the Hydrogen Economy as well as electricity production as long as care is given to maximizing the benefits and minimizing the liabilities inherent to fusion energy.
