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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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.
P. A. Bagryansky, E. D. Gospodchikov, Yu. V. Kovalenko, A. A. Lizunov, V. V. Maximov, S. V. Murakhtin, E. I. Pinzhenin, V. V. Prikhodko, V. Ya. Savkin, A. G. Shalashov, E. I. Soldatkina, A. L. Solomakhin, D. V. Yakovlev
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 68 | Number 1 | July 2015 | Pages 87-91
Technical Paper | Open Magnetic Systems 2014 | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-864
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A system for electron cyclotron resonance plasma heating (ECRH) has been recently installed at the GDT (Gas Dynamic Trap) facility at Budker Institute. The system is based on two 5.5-mm gyrotrons and is designed to deliver two microwave beams with total power of 700 kW and X-mode polarization that are absorbed at the fundamental cyclotron harmonic. A significant increase of basic plasma parameters (energy content, electron temperature, neutron flux) during the injection of microwave radiation has been registered. In particular, the on-axis electron temperature was increased from 200 eV to 600 eV in several shots with ECRH, which establishes a new record for this class of magnetic installation.
