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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.
Jae-Uk Lee, Min Ho Chang, Sei-Hun Yun, Jin-Kuk Ha, Euy Soo Lee, In-Beum Lee
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 71 | Number 3 | April 2017 | Pages 296-304
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1291027
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A Tokamak has startup and shutdown periods during which demand specifications differ from those during steady fueling operation. These periods can affect the required number of getter beds of the Storage and Delivery System. In this study, we developed a mathematical model based on the State Task Network, and an algorithm that considers daily operation which includes the period from startup to shutdown to find the optimal number of getter beds. This algorithm can estimate the optimal initial inventory of tritium or deuterium in a getter bed to compensate for fuel consumption until shutdown. The inductive operation mode of the Tokamak is analyzed to illustrate the applicability of the model and algorithm.
