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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
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. A. DeJuren and R. K. Paschall
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 20 | Number 3 | November 1964 | Pages 314-317
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE64-A19575
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The transmission of thermal neutrons through cadmium covers as a function of cadmium thickness was measured in a graphite stack at various heights above the thermal column of the AE-6 water-boiler reactor. Both dysprosium-alloy and indium-alloy foils were used as detectors and were beta-counted. Because the thermal flux incident on a cadmium cover is depressed relative to the flux incident on a bare foil, a foil with a thick cadmium cover on one side only was used for the zero-thickness measurement and its activity was doubled. The resultant thermal activities for a thin detector were consistent with the exponential integral 0.930 Ε2(dΣα) a cadmium thickness greater than 0.025 cm, where and a value of 2450 barns was used for the absorption cross section of cadmium.
