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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.
D. D. Qu, W. W. Basuki, J. Gibmeier, R. Vaßen, J. Aktaa
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 68 | Number 3 | October 2015 | Pages 578-581
Technical Paper | Proceedings of TOFE-2014 | doi.org/10.13182/FST15-113
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Reduced activation Ferritic/Martensitic (RAFM) steels, e.g. EUROFER are to be used as structural material for the First Wall (FW) of future fusion power plants. The interaction between plasma and FW, especially physical sputtering will limit the FW lifetime under normal operation. Therefore tungsten coating is selected to protect the FW due to its very low sputtering yield and low activation. However, the mismatch in thermo-physical properties between tungsten and EUROFER can lead to large residual thermal stresses and even failure. To overcome the issue of erosion a protective tungsten coating with a functionally graded (FG) tungsten/EUROFER layer (FG tungsten/EUROFER coating system) on EUROFER substrate will be developed and optimized.
Non-linear finite element simulations are performed to predict optimal parameters of the coating system. Thereby the potential of the FG-layer in reducing inelastic strains and improving lifetime is demonstrated, and the investigated thickness of FG-layer is suggested. Based on the simulation results samples are fabricated by vacuum plasma spraying (VPS) with three different thicknesses of FG-layer. The microstructural observations revealed that the coating system has fine gradation and variable thickness as designed, low porosity, as well as a sound interface. Berkovich and Vickers hardness identify basic properties of those layers.
