ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
Standards Program
The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
Latest Magazine Issues
Sep 2025
Jan 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
September 2025
Nuclear Technology
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.
William G. Davey
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 24 | Number 1 | January 1966 | Pages 26-41
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE66-A18121
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new activation technique has been developed for the measurement of the ratio of the capture cross section of 238U and the fission cross section of 235U in zero-energy fast reactors. This work was initiated because of the long-standing discrepancy between calculated values of this ratio and radio-chemically measured values. The new technique is a direct counting method that does not involve chemical separation in any way. Measurements have been made in four Z PR-III fast reactor assemblies, two with hard spectra and two with soft spectra. In all four cases the measured ratio was slightly higher than the calculated value being, on the average, 4% higher than calculation. This is in strong contrast with the past radiochemical measurements in Z PR-U3 assemblies that gave values 16% less than calculation. The present measurements, therefore, support the general correctness of the calculated ratio and, hence, indicate that there are no gross errors in the assumed average microscopic values of the 238U capture cross section and the 235 U fission cross section.
