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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. Stamoulis, K. Ioannides, P. Kassomenos, A. Vlachogianni
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 48 | Number 1 | July-August 2005 | Pages 512-515
Technical Paper | Tritium Science and Technology - Containment, Safety, and Environment | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A978
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Tritium is an isotope of hydrogen, produced in the upper level of the atmosphere. It enters the water cycle after its oxidation and through the precipitation. The measurement of tritium concentration in rainwater is of great importance because it can be used for hydrology investigations such as the recharge mode or the vulnerability of aquifers.For this purpose, rainwater samples were collected for a period of 16 months from October 2002 to January 2004 from a sampling station at Ioannina, northwestern Greece. Each sample was filtered and measured without any further treatment for tritium activity, using a super low-level background, liquid scintillation analyzer. Five mL of the sample were mixed with 15 mL of scintillation cocktail, specially designed for low-level tritium measurements and its beta activity was measured for 500 min.Results show that during the sampling period, the tritium concentration varied up to two fold, increasing during the spring and summer months. The measured tritium concentrations in rainwater, which ranged from 9 ± 4 to 23 ± 5 TU, can be used for local hydrology studies.
