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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.
L. C. Cadwallader
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 47 | Number 4 | May 2005 | Pages 995-1002
Technical Paper | Fusion Energy - Tritium, Safety, and Environment | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A818
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Worker Exposure Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (WE-FMEA) is a new approach to quantitatively evaluate worker risks from possible failures of co-located equipment in the complex environment of a magnetic or inertial fusion experiment. For next-step experiments such as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) or the National Ignition Facility (NIF), the systems and equipment will be larger, handle more throughput or power, and will, in general, be more robust than past experiments. These systems and equipment are necessary to operate the machine, but the rooms are congested with equipment, piping, and cables, which poses a new level of hazard for workers who will perform hands-on maintenance. The WE-FMEA systematically analyzes the nearby equipment and the work environment for equipment failure or inherent hazards, and then develops exposure scenarios. Once identified, the exposure scenarios are evaluated for the worker hazards and quantitative worker risk is calculated. Then risk scenarios are quantitatively compared to existing statistical data on worker injuries; high-risk scenarios can be identified and addressed in more detail to determine the proper means to reduce, mitigate, or protect against the hazard. The WE-FMEA approach is described and a cooling system maintenance example is given.