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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.
Masabumi Nishikawa
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 57 | Number 2 | February 2010 | Pages 120-128
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST10-A9366
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The tritium balance in a D-T fusion reactor is discussed in this paper comparing the amount of tritium consumed in the fueling cycle including the plasma vessel with the amount of tritium generated in the blanket system, using information reported so far. This comparison shows that the overall burning efficiency of tritium in the plasma vessel, the tritium loss ratio represented by tritium trapping in the redeposition layer of the plasma-facing material, and the recovery efficiency in the tritium breeding system play important roles in the tritium balance and that it may not be easy to maintain good tritium economy of a D-T fusion reactor if the proper combination of burning efficiency, tritium loss ratio, and tritium recovery efficiency is not obtained. The allowable limits for the overall tritium burning efficiency, for the tritium loss ratio in the fueling cycle, and for the recovery efficiency to secure the self-sustainable tritium system are also discussed in this paper.
