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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.
M. Hara et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 48 | Number 1 | July-August 2005 | Pages 144-147
Technical Paper | Tritium Science and Technology - Tritium Science and Technology - Detritiation, Purification, and Isotope Separation | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A899
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new kind of materials that can be applied to a gas chromatographic hydrogen isotope separation system was developed to reduce the amount of Pd-Pt alloy required for making the column and to improve the separation efficiency. Pd and Pt were deposited on -Al2O3 powder by using a barrel sputtering system. Prepared sample powder was characterized from surface morphology, element distributions on the surface, composition and crystallinity. The characterization showed that a uniform layer of Pd-Pt alloy with expected composition was formed on Al2O3 particles. The crystallinity, however, was poor, but improved after annealing at 1073 K for 2 hours. The hydrogen absorbing behavior was also improved by the annealing. A separation column was prepared from the annealed powder and was subjected to experiments on hydrogen isotope separation. The column of annealed powder gave considerably good separation efficiency around room temperature, in spite that only 0.35 g of Pd-Pt was used for the column. The amount of Pd-Pt alloy used here should be compared to previous results, where 1.5 g of Pd-Pt powder was required for high separation efficiency. The new material was quite effective to reduce the amount of Pd-Pt alloy without compromising the separation efficiency and can give further improvement.
