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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.
Satoshi Nakamoto, Yousuke Takeshita, Shota Hagihara, Takayuki Wada, Hiromasa Takeno, Yasuyoshi Yasaka, Yuichi Furuyama, Akira Taniike
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 68 | Number 1 | July 2015 | Pages 166-170
Technical Note | Open Magnetic Systems 2014 | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-900
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
With an aim to improve the total efficiency of a D-3He nuclear fusion direct energy conversion system, a secondary electron direct energy converter (SEDEC) is proposed. The incident high-energy protons in an SEDEC penetrate a large number of foil electrodes aligned in the direction of the proton beam, and emitted secondary electrons are recovered. The results of the initial experiments showed that most of the secondary electrons flowed into anteroposterior electrodes and did not arrive at the electron collector located alongside and perpendicular to the direction of the proton beam. A magnetic field was introduced to push the electrons toward the electron collector, but it was not effective for energy recovery. This technical note analyzes the trajectories of electrons in the presence of the magnetic field and proposes and examines a revised arrangement of permanent magnets. The arrangement of the magnets along one side of the proton beam greatly improved the energy recovery; however, the recovery level was lower than that without magnets.