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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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.
Satoru Higashijima, Yutaka Kamada, Pietro Barabaschi, Hiroshi Shirai, JT-60SA Team
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 68 | Number 2 | September 2015 | Pages 259-266
Technical Paper | Proceedings of TOFE-2014 | doi.org/10.13182/FST15-108
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The JT-60SA superconducting tokamak is now under construction toward the first plasma in March 2019 as a joint project between the Broader Approach (BA) Satellite Tokamak Programme between Japan and Europe, and the Japanese national programme. The JT-60SA mission is to contribute to early realization of fusion energy by supporting ITER and by complementing ITER in resolving key physics and engineering issues for DEMO reactors. Before procurements of the major components, some R&Ds for key techniques were performed. By November 2014, 25 procurement arrangements (PAs) have been launched (JA: 14 PAs, EU: 11 PAs) covering 88% of the total cost of the BA Satellite Tokamak Programme, and the main components have entered the manufacturing stage. In addition, the JT-60SA tokamak assembly started since January 2013. This paper summarizes the recent progress of the JT-60SA project.
