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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.
B. J. Haid, T. N. Malsbury, C. R. Gibson, C. T. Warren
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 55 | Number 3 | April 2009 | Pages 276-282
Technical Paper | Eighteenth Target Fabrication Specialists' Meeting | doi.org/10.13182/FST08-3451
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A single quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) is cooled to 18 K to measure condensation rates inside of a retractable shroud enclosure. The shroud is designed to minimize condensate on fusion targets to be fielded at the National Ignition Facility (NIF). The shroud has a double-walled construction with an inner wall that may be cooled to 75 to 100 K.The QCM and the shroud system were mounted in a vacuum chamber and cooled using a cryocooler. Condensation rates were measured at various vacuum levels and compositions and with the shroud open or closed. A technique for measuring total condensate during the cooldown of the system with an accuracy of >1 × 10-6 g/cm2 was also demonstrated. The technique involves a separate measurement of the condensate-free crystal frequency as a function of temperature that is compared to the measurement for the cooldown trend of interest. The shroud significantly reduces the condensation rates of all gases and effectively eliminates H2O condensation.
