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September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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.
M. J. Ohanian, R. S. Booth, R. B. Perez
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 30 | Number 1 | October 1967 | Pages 95-103
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE67-A17246
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Neutron-wave propagation in moderating media is investigated within the framework of the diffusion approximation to the Boltzmann equation, using a realistic scattering model and the eigenfunction expansion method. The eigenfunctions are obtained from the thermalization theory solution to the exponential experiment with their corresponding eigenvalues being the fundamental and higher diffusion lengths of the medium. Expanding the energy dependence of the neutron-wave problem in these eigenfunctions leads to a simpler and more accurate secular determinant than that obtained from a Laguerre polynomial expansion. Solving the secular determinant yields the squared complex inverse relaxation lengths for the asymptotic energy mode and for the continuum energy modes. A discrete energy formulation, Simpson's rule integration scheme, and the Jacobi method of matrix diagonalization are used in the numerical solution to the eigen-value problem. The dispersion law for graphite, obtained by direct solution of the complex secular determinant, is compared with experimental results. This investigation indicates that high-energy-mode contamination will not seriously affect neutron-wave experiments in graphite in the frequency range where diffusion and thermalization parameters can be obtained.