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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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.
D. T. Frey et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 47 | Number 4 | May 2005 | Pages 1143-1146
Technical Paper | Fusion Energy - Inertial Fusion Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-30
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE) with laser drivers is a pulsed power generation system that relies on repetitive, high-speed injection of targets into a fusion reactor. To produce an economically viable IFE power plant the targets must be injected into the reactor at a rate between 5 and 10 Hz.To survive the injection process, direct drive (laser fusion) targets (spherical capsules) are placed into protective sabots. The sabots separate from the target and are stripped off before entering the reactor chamber. Indirect drive (heavy ion fusion) utilizes a hohlraum surrounding the spherical capsule and enters the chamber as one piece.In our target injection demonstration system, the sabots or hohlraums are injected into a vacuum system with a light gas gun using helium as a propellant. To achieve pulsed operation a rep-rated injection system has been developed. For a viable power plant we must be able to fire continuously at 6 Hz. This demonstration system is currently set up to allow bursts of up to 12 targets at 6 Hz. Using the current system, tests have been successfully run with direct drive targets to show sabot separation under vacuum and at barrel exit velocities of ~400 m/s.The existing revolver system along with operational data will be presented.
