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.
L. Zani, P-E. Gille, C. Gonzales, S. Kuppel, A. Torre
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 56 | Number 2 | August 2009 | Pages 690-694
ITER | Eighteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Part 2) | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A8989
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the framework of ITER magnet R&D activities, a significant number of conductor short-samples or inserts were tested throughout the past decades, either for development on cable layouts or for industrial qualifications. On a certain number of them critical properties degradations were encountered, some of which were identified to be caused by current imbalance between the different strands bundles twisted inside the cable.In order to address the analyses of those samples as reliably as possible, CEA developed a dedicated home code named Coupled Algorithm Resistive Modelling Electrical Network (CARMEN) having basically two specific functionalities:-a first routine which is devoted to compute strand bundles trajectories, with bundles down to the individual strand scale. This point allows to obtain a realistic E(J) law over the full conductor length-a second routine which is devoted to model inter-bundle currents redistribution, taking into account the magnetic field map. It basically makes use of a relevant discrete electrical network with defined sections including E(J) law obtained from the above-mentioned subroutineAs a result, the E-J or E-T curves can be calculated and compared to the experimental data, provided adapted inputs on sample features are considered, such as strand contact resistances in joints, inter-bundles resistances or cable geometry.In a first part, the paper describes the different hypotheses that built the code structure, and in a second part, the application to the ITER TFCI insert coil is presented, focusing particularly on the validation of the potential use of the code to stand as a diagnostic tool for currents imbalance probing.