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Fusion Science and Technology
August 2025
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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.
Robert C. Cook, Mitchell Anthamatten, Stephan A. Letts, Abbas Nikroo, Donald G. Czechowicz
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 45 | Number 2 | March 2004 | Pages 148-156
Technical Paper | Target Fabrication | doi.org/10.13182/FST04-A442
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
One approach to improving the quality of the DT ice layer on the inside of a NIF capsule target is to enhance the natural -layering process by heating the ice with infrared light (IR) tuned to a D2 or DT excitation band. However to do this the IR must pass through the capsule wall, and absorption by the capsule material results in heat generation that is deleterious both in terms of reducing the energy input to the ice as well as increasing the difficulty of symmetrically cooling the capsule. In order to optimize the choice of wavelength we have measured the wavelength dependent transmission properties of IR through the plastic materials we are considering for capsule fabrication. We will present wavelength dependent extinction coefficient data for normal and fully deuterated plasma polymer and vapor deposited polyimide.
