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September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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.
P. Koert, P. MacGibbon, R. Vieira, D. Terry, R. Leccacorvi, J. Doody, W. Beck
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 56 | Number 1 | July 2009 | Pages 109-113
Plasma Engineering and Diagnostics | Eighteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Part 1) | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A8885
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We have developed high power four and eight way splitters for a new Lower Hybrid launcher. The motivation for the new launcher was the need to provide more power and reliability to the launcher structure. In addition there was a desire to simplify and increase the reliability of the implementation of the alumina windows. The launcher consists of 64 waveguide apertures powered by 8 klystrons with maximum power of 250 kW each at 4.6 GHz. Hence, it is necessary to split the power from each Klystron into eight separate waveguides. The outputs of the splitter have a difference in power less than 0.1dB and phase less than 2 degree. The design analysis of the splitter was done with the computer code CST. Structure analysis was performed using Ansys. The splitter is fabricated by machining an open cavity into a thick stainless steel plate creating the specified internal geometry. It is machined to a tight tolerance of +/- 0.005". A fitted lid is then welded on top of the open cavity using electron beam welding. The excess metal is removed with Electro discharge machining (EDM) creating the external geometry. The waveguides are then butt-welded to the splitter. Welding fixtures/parameters are being developed to achieve the desired tolerances. Two methods for attaching the ceramic windows are being evaluated, brazing and electro-forming.
