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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.
A. Molvik, A. Ivanov, G. L. Kulcinski, D. Ryutov, J. Santarius, T. Simonen, B. D. Wirth, A. Ying
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 57 | Number 4 | May 2010 | Pages 369-394
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/FST10-A9499
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The successful operation (with 60%, classical ions and electrons with Te = 250 eV) of the gas dynamic trap device at the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics in Novosibirsk, Russia, extrapolates to a 2 MW/m2 dynamic trap neutron source (DTNS), which burns only [approximately]100 g of tritium per full-power year. The DTNS has no physics, engineering, or technology showstoppers; the extension of neutral beam lines to steady state can use demonstrated engineering; and it supports near-term tokamaks and volume neutron sources. The DTNS provides a neutron spectrum similar to that of ITER and satisfies the missions specified by the materials community to test fusion materials (listed as one of the top grand challenges for engineering in the 21st century by the U.S. National Academy of Engineering) and subcomponents (including tritium-breeding blankets) needed to construct DEMO. The DTNS could serve as the first fusion nuclear science facility (FNSF), called for by ReNeW (the Research Needs Workshop), and could provide the data necessary for licensing subsequent FSNFs.
