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.
M. Z. Youssef, M. E. Sawan
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 47 | Number 3 | April 2005 | Pages 518-523
Technical Paper | Fusion Energy - First Wall, Blanket, and Shield | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A736
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The US has considered, among other options, two blanket concepts for Demo reactor in which helium is primarily used to cool the first wall (FW) and structure whereas molten salt (MS) is used as both coolant and breeder. Conventional reduced activation ferritic steel (RAFS, F82H) is used as the structural material in both blanket concepts. The low melting point Flibe (~380°C) is used in the first option while the Flinabe (~305°C) is used in the second option. In this paper, we present the results for assessing the radioactivity and decay heat. This assessment is performed separately for the structural material, the Be multiplier and the breeder (Flibe/Flinabe). The Class C waste disposal rating (WDR) was estimated for each material. For Flibe, Flinabe and Be the WDR is much lower than unity. However, the WDR for F82H is ~0.6-1.3. They are attributed to reactions with Mo and Nb present in F82H with levels of 70 wppm and 4 wppm, respectively. To ensure that F82H qualifies for shallow land burial, it is suggested to reduce these two impurities to ~50 and ~3 wppm, respectively.
