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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.
A. Langenberg, J. Svensson, H. Thomsen, O. Marchuk, N. A. Pablant, R. Burhenn, R. C. Wolf
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 69 | Number 2 | April 2016 | Pages 560-567
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST15-181
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Two X-ray imaging crystal spectrometer systems are currently being prepared for commissioning at the stellarator Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X). Both are expected to be ready for the first plasma operation in 2015. The spectrometers will provide line-integrated measurements of basic plasma parameters like ion and electron temperatures (Te,Ti), plasma rotation (vrot), and argon impurity densities. A forward model based on the designed installation geometries of both spectrometers has been performed using the Minerva Bayesian analysis framework. This model allows us to create synthesized data given radial profiles of plasma parameters for a wide range of different scenarios. To simulate line-integrated spectra as measured by the (virtual) detector, the geometry and Gaussian detection noise are assumed. The line-integrated plasma parameters are inferred within the framework from noisy spectral data using the maximum posterior method. The capabilities and limitations of the model and method are discussed through examples of several synthesized data sets of different plasma parameter profiles.
