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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.
M. S. Lyttle, L. R. Baylor, R. E. Battle, S. J. Meitner, D. A. Rasmussen, J. M. Shoulders
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 71 | Number 3 | April 2017 | Pages 251-255
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1290969
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
ITER will use a Pellet Injection System (PIS) for supplying deuterium-tritium (D-T) fuel to the fusion plasma and a Shattered Pellet Injection (SPI) system for rapidly injecting impurities (argon or neon mixed with deuterium) as solidified pellets into the plasma for the purpose of mitigating the harmful effects of plasma disruptions as part of a Disruption Mitigation System (DMS). Both systems are being designed to handle significant amounts of tritium in the process streams and are exposed to similar environmental conditions during operation, including exposure to gamma and neutron radiation and significant magnetic fields. Multiple barriers to prevent the potential release of the tritium inventory into the environment are included in the designs. The unique environmental conditions present some challenges and are currently being addressed during the design phase.
