ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
Standards Program
The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
Latest Magazine Issues
Sep 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
September 2025
Nuclear Technology
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.
K. Ezato, M. Dairaku, M. Taniguchi, K. Sato, S. Suzuki, M. Akiba, C. Ibbott, R. Tivey
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 46 | Number 4 | December 2004 | Pages 530-540
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST04-A588
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The first fabrication and heating test of a large-scale carbon-fiber-composite (CFC) monoblock divertor mock-up using an annular flow concept has been performed to demonstrate its manufacturability and thermomechanical performance. This mock-up is based on the design of the lower part of the vertical target of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) divertor adapted for the annular flow concept. The annular cooling tube consists of two concentric tubes: an outer tube made of CuCrZr and an inner stainless steel tube with a twisted external fin. Prior to the fabrication of the mock-up, brazed joint tests between the CFC monoblock and the CuCrZr tube have been carried out to find the suitable heat treatment mitigating loss of the high mechanical strength of the CuCrZr material. A basic mechanical examination of CuCrZr undergoing the brazing heat treatment and finite element method analyses are also performed to support the design of the mock-up. High heat flux tests on the large-scale divertor mock-up have been performed in an ion beam facility. The mock-up has successfully withstood more than 1000 thermal cycles of 20 MW/m2 for 15 s and 3000 cycles of >10 MW/m2 for 15 s, which simulates the heat load condition of the ITER divertor. No degradation of the thermal performance of the mock-up has been observed throughout the thermal cycle test although in the tile with exposure to the heat flux of 20 MW/m2, the erosion depth has been measured as 5.8 and 8.8 mm at the 300th and 500th cycles.