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Fusion Science and Technology
August 2025
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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.
C. Gil, C. De Michelis, D. Elbeze, C. Fenzi, J. P. Gunn, F. Imbeaux, Ph. Lotte, D. Mazon, O. Meyer, M. Missirlian, Ph. Moreau, R. Reichle, R. Sabot, F. Saint-Laurent, J.-L. Segui, A. Simonin, J.-M. Travere, J.-C. Vallet, Tore Supra Team
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 56 | Number 3 | October 2009 | Pages 1219-1252
Technical Papers | Tore Supra Special Issue | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A9175
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Realizing high-power long-duration discharges puts specific constraints on diagnostics: Their front parts have to withstand important thermal loads, eventually requiring active cooling of critical parts, and drifts in measurements have to be avoided in order to supply reliable measurement during the whole discharge duration. Furthermore, the importance of diagnostics for missions other than physics understanding, such as machine operation or safety control, increases. The diagnostics system of Tore Supra consists of roughly 30 diagnostics, covering a large range of plasma parameters from the core to the edge. They have been designed for long-duration plasma discharges, which can last up to 1000 s. Their inner components have been dimensioned to endure continuous high-radiation fluxes, and most of them have been conceived to give a fair measurement all along the discharges.