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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.
Peter Ozemoyah, John Robinson
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 71 | Number 3 | April 2017 | Pages 450-456
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1291037
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Tritium in everyday water (potable water) is frequently of a level that is too low for measurement with conventional instrumentation that is affordable by small laboratories. Scintillation counters that can measure in fractions of Becquerels per litre are usually out of the reach of most laboratories, especially in developing countries. By concentrating the tritium by a known amount, it can reach measurable levels that can be converted back to the original concentration. Affordability of the concentrating process is vital in the overall process.
A simple concentrating process based on purification and electrolysis was designed and fabricated. The tritium isotope enrichment level, the volumetric reduction and the time frame required for the enrichment were determined using the simple designed and fabricated process, and an easily affordable scintillation counter.
The simple designed and fabricated system effectively concentrated the tritium in the sampled water several times the initial value. The enrichment resulted in the output product being measurable in a non-expensive scintillation counter.