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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.
K. Isobe et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 48 | Number 1 | July-August 2005 | Pages 302-305
Technical Paper | Tritium Science and Technology - Tritium Handling Facilities | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A932
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The behavior of tritium release from the vacuum vessel of JT-60U during air exposure phase at controlled water vapor concentration and gas purging in the wall conditioning phase has been investigated. For the air exposure with varying water vapor concentrations of 40ppm, 300ppm, 680ppm and 3400ppm, tritium concentration in the vacuum vessel of JT-60U was measured. At each water vapor concentration, tritium concentration initially increased with time and then became steady finally. The steady tritium concentration increased with water vapor concentration. The total amount of tritium released from the vacuum vessel was 13MBq for 3400ppm. This amount is almost the same as that removed by 5 hours' H2-GDC, which has been the most effective method for tritium removal from JT-60U. This suggests that tritium in the vacuum vessel of JT-60U can be easily removed by water vapor. Tritium released into exhaust gas during gas purging was also measured for varying gases (H2, He and Ar), at different pressures and temperatures of the vacuum vessel. Tritium concentration of the exhaust gas was about 0.1Bq/cm3 at room temperature and was independent of gas species within the pressure from 0.05 to 0.3 Pa. This result indicates that isotope exchange of tritium with hydrogen molecules was not so active under these purge conditions.
