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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.
R. E. Maerker, F. J. Muckenthaler
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 30 | Number 3 | December 1967 | Pages 340-354
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE67-A18397
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Monte Carlo calculations, using the albedo concept, have been carried out to determine subcadmium and epicadmium neutron flux distributions along the centerline of a straight, a two-legged, and a three-legged square concrete duct arising from the slowing down of incident epicadmium neutrons for a particularly demanding source geometry and spectrum. The calculations used albedo data differential both in the reflected angles and reflected energy which have been reported previously for concrete. A comparison of the results of these calculations with those from a geometrically similar experiment shows good agreement and places on a firm foundation the concept of treating neutron slowing down in a concrete duct as a reflection phenomenon at a point which is describable by the differential albedo properties of the walls. The conclusion is also reached that the dose rates arising from the subcadmium neutrons (whether due to an epicadmium source or a subcadmium source) and associated secondary wall-capture gamma rays can comprise a very important part of the total absorbed dose rate in tissue deep inside a multilegged duct.