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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.
A. J. H. Donné, M. F. M. de Bock, I. G. J. Classen, M. G. von Hellermann, K. Jakubowska, R. Jaspers, C. J. Barth, H. J. van der Meiden, T. Oyevaar, M. J. van de Pol, S. K. Varshney, G. Bertschinger, W. Biel, C. Busch, K. H. Finken, H. R. Koslowski, A. Krämer-Flecken, A. Kreter, Y. Liang, H. Oosterbeek, O. Zimmermann, G. Telesca, G. Verdoolaege, C. W. Domier, N. C. Luhmann, Jr., E. Mazzucato, T. Munsat, H. Park, M. Kantor, D. Kouprienko, A. Alexeev, S. Ohdachi, S. Korsholm, P. Woskov, H. Bindslev, F. Meo, P. K. Michelsen, S. Michelsen, S. K. Nielsen, E. Tsakadze, L. Shmaenok
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 47 | Number 2 | February 2005 | Pages 220-245
Technical Paper | TEXTOR: Diagnostics | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A702
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The diagnostic system of TEXTOR comprises about 50 individual diagnostic devices. Since the start of the Trilateral Euregio Cluster collaboration, part of the emphasis in the experimental program has shifted toward the study of physics processes in the plasma core. To aid these studies several new and advanced core diagnostics have been implemented, whereas a number of other core diagnostics have been upgraded to higher resolution, more channels, and better accuracy. In this paper a brief overview is given of the present set of plasma core diagnostics at TEXTOR.
