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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.
L. Stefan, N. Trantea, A. Roberts, S. Strikwerda, A. Antoniazzi, D. Zaharia
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 71 | Number 3 | April 2017 | Pages 236-240
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1288413
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
ICSI has recently completed the conceptual design of the Cernavoda Tritium Removal Facility (CTRF). CTRF is sized to process heavy water from 2 CANDU reactors, treating 40 kg/h of 10–54 Ci/kg heavy water over 40 years. CTRF removes tritium using Liquid Phase Catalytic Exchange (LPCE) paired with Cryogenic Distillation (CD).
The CTRF design has implemented improvements based on design and operational knowledge from DTRF, WTRF, ICSI pilot plant, other tritium laboratories, and industry. Additionally, there are site, client, and regulatory requirements that have imposed differences from other TRF designs. This paper identifies the key improvements and requirements, explains the rationale for the design choice and highlights drawbacks. The key improvements and requirements, grouped under four categories, include:
Safety – a Safe Shutdown State, higher seismic qualifications, restrictions on D2O transfers, extensive use of double containment;
Core Systems – use of a mixed catalyst bed for the LPCE, no catalytic oxidation skid, helium refrigeration system cooling of the cryoadsorbers, better control of the CD cascade by using pumps on reverse flows, and the use of a CuO reactor with molecular sieves dryers for cleanup of tritium in glovebox atmospheres;
Site, client and regulatory requirements – lower worker dose limits, independent utilities from nuclear Units 1 and 2, different targets for environmental releases and management of external hazards, and the application of the latest reactor grade Regulatory Standards in force in Romania;
Auxiliary systems, utilities, and the building – removal of H2-O2 recombiner catalyst from the Air Detritiation System, use of a PEM electrolytic cell for D2 makeup, and no need for steam in the CTRF facility.