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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.
L. Hu, K. Chen, Y. Chen, S. Li, J. Shen, X. Sheng, L. Niu, Y. Cheng, J. Zhao
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 70 | Number 1 | July 2016 | Pages 112-118
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/FST15-137
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The radial X-ray camera (RXC) is designed to measure the poloidal profile of plasma X-ray emission with high spatial and temporal resolution. Its primary diagnostic role includes measuring low (m, n) magnetohydrodynamic modes, sawteeth and disruption precursors, H-mode, edge-localized modes, and L-H transition. The RXC comprises two subsystems, i.e., in-port and ex-port cameras that view the outer and core regions, respectively, through vertical slots in the diagnostics shield module of an equatorial port plug. Detailed camera design is in progress including design of the camera structure, electronics, data acquisition and control, calibration, and pretest on the EAST tokamak. The sight path and neutron shielding have been optimized. The secondary vacuum, heat insulation, cooling, positioning, and calibration have been designed. The structure analysis results for the external camera indicate that even under five times gravity acceleration, the maximum stress was still below the allowable stress. The heat analysis results indicate that the maximum temperature on the detector box was ~56°C, which is within the detector operation temperature limit. The neutronics analysis results indicate that the detectors can be operated during the whole deuterium-deuterium phase without detector replacement. The electronics group and instrumentation and control group have also made good progress.