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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. Katayama et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 48 | Number 1 | July-August 2005 | Pages 561-564
Technical Paper | Tritium Science and Technology - Materials Interaction and Permeation | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A987
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Release behavior of hydrogen isotopes from the graphite tiles used in JT-60U was observed using the thermal desorption method where temperature was stepwise elevated to 300, 600 and 1000 °C. When first wall tile was left under helium atmosphere at 600 °C for 8 hours, about 40 % of total amount of hydrogen and deuterium retained in the tile was released, although only a small amount of hydrogen isotopes was released at 300 °C, which is the base temperature of inner wall of JT-60U. This indicates that a higher temperature of inner wall causes hydrogen retention to reduce considerably. When the graphite tiles were exposed to hydrogen at 1000 °C, the release of deuterium and tritium was enhanced. It is considered that the deuterium and tritium left in the graphite tile was released by the isotope exchange reaction. In order to remove almost all deuterium or tritium from the graphite tile without combustion of graphite, isotope exchange method at high temperature is effective. It was found that the amount of hydrogen retained in the graphite tile was much larger than that of deuterium. This indicates that a large amount of deuterium trapped in the tiles during deuterium discharge experiments was replaced with hydrogen during hydrogen discharge experiments. Additionally, depth profiles of hydrogen isotope are discussed from the obtained release curves.