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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.
W. L. Waldron et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 56 | Number 1 | July 2009 | Pages 452-455
IFE Drivers and Chambers | Eighteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Part 1) | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A8943
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Heavy Ion Fusion Science Virtual National Laboratory (HIFS-VNL) is currently developing design concepts for NDCX-II, the second phase of the Neutralized Drift Compression Experiment, which will use ion beams to explore Warm Dense Matter (WDM) and Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE) target hydrodynamics. The ion induction accelerator will consist of a new short pulse injector and induction cells from the decommissioned Advanced Test Accelerator (ATA) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). To fit within an existing building and to meet the energy and temporal requirements of various target experiments, an aggressive beam compression and acceleration schedule is planned. WDM physics and ion-driven direct drive hydrodynamics will initially be explored with 30 nC of lithium ions in experiments involving ion deposition, ablation, acceleration and stability of planar targets. Other ion sources which may deliver higher charge per bunch will be explored. A test stand has been built at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) to test refurbished ATA induction cells and pulsed power hardware for voltage holding and ability to produce various compression and acceleration waveforms. Another test stand is being used to develop and characterize lithium-doped aluminosilicate ion sources. The first experiments will include heating metallic targets to 10,000 K and hydrodynamics studies with cryogenic hydrogen targets.