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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.
Paul Korinko, Simona Hunyadi Murph, George Larsen
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 71 | Number 4 | May 2017 | Pages 628-633
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1290950
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Tritium is produced by irradiating Tritium Producing Burnable Absorber Rods (TPBARs) in a Commercial Light Water Reactor at the Tennessee Valley Authority Watts Bar Reactor 1. The TPBARs are manufactured with strict materials specification for contaminants for all of the components. Despite meeting these requirements, gamma emitting contamination in the form of 65Zn was detected in a glovebox that was designed to contain tritium. A forensic examination of the piping revealed that the zinc was borne from natural zinc. This zinc deposits at an anomalous distance from the extraction furnace based on vapor pressure. A method to capture the zinc was developed that is intended to prevent the further spread of the 65Zn. This method relies on operating filter media at a specific temperature and location. While this approach is acceptable for the facility while it is in limited operation, as the facility undergoes increased utilization, there is a possibility of scheduling conflicts for maintenance and increasing dose to workers. In order to preclude these issues, methods to contain the zinc within the furnace module, an area designed for high radiation dose, were examined and experimental approaches were developed. These approaches used bulk materials and nano-materials deposited on various substrates that are compatible with tritium and the extraction process. These materials were tested to ascertain their zinc capturing capability, capacity, and characteristics. The first generation material was optimized and a process lid has been fabricated for testing.