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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.
N. D. Viza, M. H. Romanofsky, M. J. Moynihan, D. R. Harding
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 70 | Number 2 | August-September 2016 | Pages 219-225
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST15-216
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A T-junction microfluidic device consists of one microchannel connected to a second microchannel at 90 deg. The size of the emulsions that form at the junction depends on the dimensions of the channel and the properties of the immiscible fluids flowing through them. Micron-sized emulsions are easily formed in small channels where interfacial tension forces dominate, but it is more difficult to form larger emulsions that could be used to produce inertial confinement fusion (ICF) targets. The concept and feasibility of using this method to mass-produce millimeter-sized ICF targets are presented.
The experimental data presented here will demonstrate the competing contribution of the fluids’ surface tension and fluid velocity to forming and controlling the volume of millimeter-sized oil-in-water emulsions. The oil-in-water emulsion is the first step in the process of making resorcinol-formaldehyde foam targets (1 to 4 mm in diameter). Adding a surfactant to the aqueous phase lowered the aqueous-solid surface energy, which allowed for greater flexibility in manufacturing T-junctions. Equally important, although it also lowered the interfacial surface tension, the emulsions remained encapsulated by adjusting the flow velocities. The effect of the surfactant on the completing shear, viscous, and surface energy forces involved in the microencapsulation mechanism is described. Oil-in-water emulsions, 1.32 to 8.32 mm in diameter, and water-in-oil emulsions, 1.10 to 3.2 mm diameter, were formed. A protocol is presented for tuning the droplet diameter to a desired value based on the capillary number and the relative fluid velocities ratio (which must be below 0.5). A linear regression showed the relationship between the fluid velocities and desired droplet diameter. Control of the outer diameter was demonstrated over a 1.75- to 4.14-mm-diameter range with a 426- to 900-μm wall thickness.