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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.
J. K. Dickens, F. G. Perey
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 36 | Number 3 | June 1969 | Pages 280-290
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE69-A18725
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We have obtained gamma-ray spectra for the reactions 14N(n, n′γ)14N, 14N(n,þγ)14C, and 14N(n, αγ)11B for incident mean neutron energies En = 5.8, 6.4, 6.8, 7.4, 8.0, and 8.6 MeV. The gamma rays were detected using a coaxial Ge(Li) detector of 30 cm3 active volume. The detector was placed at 55 and 90° with respect to the incident neutron direction, and was 77 cm from the sample; time-of-flight was used with the gamma-ray detector to discriminate against pulses due to neutrons and background gamma radiation. The sample was 100 g of Be3N2 in the form of a right circular cylinder. Data were also obtained using a 75-g Be sample to provide an estimate of the background. The incident neutron beam was produced by bombarding a deuterium-filled gas cell with the pulsed deuteron beam of appropriate energy from the ORNL 6-MV Van de Graaff. The resulting neutron beam was monitored using a scintillation counter; a time-of-flight spectrum from this detector was recorded simultaneously with the gamma-ray data. These data have been studied to obtain absolute cross sections for production of gamma rays from 14N for the incident neutron energies quoted above. The cross sections have been compared, where possible, with previously measured values with good agreement. However, there are several important differences with previous data and these are discussed. In particular, summing the partial cross sections yields a value for the total nonelastic cross section that is approximately half of the total nonelastic cross section obtained from the difference between the total cross section and the total elastic cross section.