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Fusion Science and Technology
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.
Jèrèmy Mascarade, Karine Liger, Xavier Joulia, Michéle Troulay, Xuan-Mi Meyer, Christophe Perrais
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 67 | Number 2 | March 2015 | Pages 463-466
Proceedings of TRITIUM 2013 | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-T55
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper presents the results of a parametric study done on a single stage finger-type packed-bed membrane reactor (PBMR) used for heavy water vapor dedeuteration. Thanks to mass spectrometer analysis of streams leaving the PBMR, speciation of deuterated species was achieved. Measurement of the amounts of each molecular component allowed the calculation of reaction quotient at the packed-bed outlet (i.e. retentate). They highlighted that isotopic exchange reactions occurring on the catalyst particles surface are not thermodynamically equilibrated. Moreover, variation of the heavy water content in the feed exhibits competition between permeation and conversion kinetics.
