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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.
Akio Sagara, Teruya Tanaka, Juro Yagi, Mitsutoshi Takahashi, Kuniaki Miura, Takehiko Yokomine, Satoshi Fukada, Shintaro Ishiyama
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 68 | Number 2 | September 2015 | Pages 303-307
Technical Paper | Proceedings of TOFE-2014 | doi.org/10.13182/FST15-126
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A Flinak/LiPb twin-loop Orosh2i-2 was constructed in the Fusion Engineering Research Project of NIFS to establish an engineering basis for the “real function” of a liquid blanket for fusion energy reactors. It was constructed with a 3 T superconducting magnet, which is the strongest in the world for these purposes. In this study, 120 litter Flinak and LiPb were successfully prepared in-situ in a purified glove-box. Designed flow velocity up to 1.5 m/sec was achieved for both. The magnetic field and velocity dependence on pressure drop agreed well with theoretical predictions. Tentative plans for phased experiments within the next few years have been presented, including operation of Supercritical-CO2 Turbine (SCOT) power generation system in the Flinak loop.
