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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.
Peter H. Titus, H. Zhang, A. Lumsdaine, W. D. McGinnis, J. Lore, H. Neilson, T. Brown, J. Boscary, A. Peacock, Joris Fellinger
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 68 | Number 2 | September 2015 | Pages 272-276
Technical Paper | Proceedings of TOFE-2014 | doi.org/10.13182/FST15-105
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Early implementation of divertor components for the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator will include an inertially cooled system of divertor elements called the Test Divertor Unit (TDU). One part of this system is a scraper element that is intended to explore methods of mitigating heat flux on the ends of the TDU elements. This system will be in place in 2017, after a run period that will involve no divertor, and will precede steady state operation with actively cooled divertors scheduled for 2019. The TDU scraper element is an experimental device with uncertain requirements and with loading conditions which will developed as a part of the experiment. The pattern of heat flux may vary from currently predicted distributions and intensities. The design of the scraper element must accommodate this uncertainty. Originally the mechanical design was to be based on extensive studies for the monoblock-based design of an actively cooled system. An obvious simplification is the elimination of the manifolding needed for the water cooling. The wall panels on which the panels are mounted are to be maintained at 200C or less. Thermal ratcheting of the tiles, supporting structures, and backing structures is managed with adequate cooldown times, thermal anchors, where allowed, and radiative shields. Water cooling of the shields was proposed and rejected. Better radiation modeling is showing less need for multiple shields, but during initial run periods, the scraper element will have to be restricted to an acceptable operating envelope. Thermal instrumentation is recommended.