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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.
Lihua Zhou, Rui Vieira, Jeffrey Doody, William Beck, David Terry, William Cochran, James Irby, Zach Hartwig, Harold Barnard, Brandon Sorbom, Dennis Whyte
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 68 | Number 2 | September 2015 | Pages 448-452
Technical Note | Proceedings of TOFE-2014 | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-933
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Advanced Plasma Material Interaction (PMI) science requires in-situ time and space-resolved measurements over a large area of Plasma Facing Component (PFC) surfaces to study fuel retention & recovery, erosion & redeposition, material mixing, etc. A novel PFC diagnostic technique Accelerator-based In-situ Materials Surveillance (AIMS) has been developed for Alcator C-Mod. At present, the AIMS covers a relatively small (35 cm) poloidal section of the inner wall PFCs at a single toroidal angle; an upgrade has been proposed which will enable nearly full poloidal (124 cm) and 40 degree toroidal PFC coverage. This paper introduces the design, analysis and fabrication of the new TF magnet power supply system for this upgrade. First, the design of the busbar system and its support structure is described, which are required to carry 15 kA current for long pulse operation of up to 25 minutes and fault condition of 400 kA for 1 second. Additional elements in the power supply system include a bidirectional crowbar, varistor protection assemblies, and a high current bus switch. Secondly, multi-physics analyses involved in the design are presented. Electro-magnetic analysis is performed to evaluate the spreading load of the two current-carrying busbars while Joule heating with thermal racheting analysis is to estimate the temperature rise in the components. Structural analysis taking into account dead weight, thermal expansion, spreading load and seismic load is performed. All analyses are completed using finite element analysis software COMSOL. Analytical calculations are included to validate the FEA results. The power supply system is ready for fabrication.
