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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.
Y. Herreras, S. Domingo, J. M. Perlado, A. Ibarra
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 56 | Number 2 | August 2009 | Pages 741-745
Nuclear Analysis | Eighteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Part 2) | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A8997
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Future fusion reactors will require remote handling systems due to their neutronic activation and subsequent gamma irradiation inside the chamber. The testing and validation of these systems will be carried out in facilities specifically designed for this purpose. The aim of this paper is to describe a methodology to optimize both a bremsstrahlung generated gamma dose and its spatial distribution inside a given testing volume. Electron main beam spectrum and intensity, angular distribution of the split beams and target material and its thickness are the main considered parameters. Dose distribution at any given point of the testing volume is then obtained in order to perform a statistical analysis which establishes a criterion to choose the most suitable parameter configuration for the different irradiation needs.
