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.
H. Takenaga, H. Kawashima, S. Nishio, K. Tobita
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 57 | Number 1 | January 2010 | Pages 94-102
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST10-A9270
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A fueling scenario in a fusion reactor has been investigated, where tritium is fueled in the main plasma and deuterium is fueled in both the main plasma and the edge plasma. The tritium fueling in the main plasma minimizes the tritium fueling rate necessary for sustaining the high tritium density in the main plasma, resulting in the minimum tritium recycling level at the fixed pumping fraction. The deuterium fueling in the main plasma sustains the high deuterium density in the main plasma, and the deuterium fueling in the edge plasma enhances the deuterium recycling level for reducing the divertor temperature. Based on this scenario, particle balance was quantitatively investigated using the SlimCS design parameters at 2.95-GW fusion output with consideration of confinement times separately estimated for the particles fueled in the main plasma and the edge plasma. The fueling rates in the main plasma were evaluated to be 2.5 × 1022/s for tritium and 1.4 × 1022/s for deuterium when the confinement times for the particles fueled in the main and edge plasmas were assumed to be 2 s and 2 ms, respectively, and the divertor pumping fraction was assumed to be 3% of the particle flux to the divertor plates. For enhancement of the recycling level, the additional deuterium fueling in the edge plasma of 3.6 × 1023/s was required in this case. In order to satisfy the tritium balance, it was necessary to suppress the tritium retention rate to <0.01% of the tritium recycling rate and the tritium loss in the tritium cycle system to below 0.2% of the tritium fueling rate with the tritium breeding ratio of 1.05.