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.
J. B. Czirr, R. L. Bramblett
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 28 | Number 1 | April 1967 | Pages 62-71
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE67-A18668
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This experiment was conducted to obtain data to be used in calculating the number of fissions produced by neutrons in bulk 239Pu as a function of neutron energy. The data provide a consistent set of group-averaged cross sections and self-shielding factors. Although self-shielding factors have been calculated from cross-section data, no previous experiments to measure the energy dependence of 239 Pu self shielding exist. A consistent set of cross sections is possible because of the wide neutron energy range over which this experiment was done. No attempt was made to determine resonance parameters, since in this experiment poor energy resolution was used to improve statistics. (Resonance parameters are, in fact, unnecessary to determine group-averaged cross sections and room-temperature self-shielding factors.) Good-geometry self-shielding factors were measured by a plutonium fission counter shielded by various thicknesses of plutonium. Average fission cross sections, total cross sections, and self-shielding factors have been determined in 11 energy groups whose end points are in the ratio of 2.15-to-1. The energy range was 2.15 eV to 10 keV. The LRL Linac neutron time-of-flight facility was used, with a neutron resolution of 0.18 μsec/m. The detector consisted of a spark chamber that was sensitive to fission fragments, facing a 0.4 mg/cm2 plutonium-239 foil. Seven Pu absorber foils ranging from 0.06 to 3 g/cm2 were used in the self-shielding measurements. This range of absorber thickness yields an adequate description of the resonance-produced surface-absorption effect throughout the above energy region.