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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.
R. Minami, T. Imai, T. Kariya, T. Numakura, T. Kato, M. Uehara, R. Goto, K. Tsumura, Y. Endo, M. Ichimura
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 68 | Number 1 | July 2015 | Pages 142-146
Technical Paper | Open Magnetic Systems 2014 | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-869
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Development of an electron cyclotron heating (ECH) mirror antenna and MW gyrotrons for power modulation experiments in GAMMA 10 has been started in order to generate and control the high heat flux and to make the edge-localized mode (ELM)-like intermittent heat load pattern for divertor simulation studies. A peak heat flux of more than 10 MW/m2 on the GAMMA 10 axis has been obtained during ECH injection within the available power of ECH. This value almost corresponds to the steady-state heat load of the divertor plate of ITER. However, we need a substantial upgrade of the heating power to approach the ITER level ELM energy density. We carry out a design study for a mirror antenna and higher power gyrotrons in order to generate higher intermittent heat flux in GAMMA 10 tandem mirror for future divertor simulation studies.
