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Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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.
Enrico Magnani, Lionel Cachon, Thomas Ihli, Jeremy West
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 56 | Number 2 | August 2009 | Pages 935-939
Power Plants, Demo, and Next Steps | Eighteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Part 2) | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A9030
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A part of the recent scoping studies for a European DEMO reactor deals with the design of the in-vessel components and their integration inside the reactor. The main in-vessel components are the Breeding Blankets (Helium Cooled Lithium Lead and Helium Cooled Pebble Bed), the helium supply units called Manifolds (MF) and the Neutron Shields. Alternative concepts for the integration of these components have been developed in parallel by different Europe an associations (FZK, CEA, and EFET). Nevertheless these concepts are all based on the vertical segmentation concept called "Multi Module Segment" (MMS). The big advantage of the MMS concept dwells in the fact that blankets and MF constitute a vertical non-permanent segment to be installed and dismantled by Remote Handling (RH) tools through the upper ports of the reactor. The dimensions, geometry and materials are strictly dependent on the harsh conditions of the in-vessel environment: high temperatures, high neutron fluxes, and high thermo-mechanical loads during normal operations and disruptive events. In addition, suitable systems of attachment able to withstand thermal expansion and the expected loads have been developed to provide reliability and easy in-vessel maintenance. The general aspects of the MMS system and the common RH procedures foreseen are presented and the different specific options for solving attachment and in-vessel assembly issues are discussed.