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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.
Richard E. Kaiser, William R. Kimel
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 20 | Number 4 | December 1964 | Pages 468-475
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE64-A20989
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Several methods are available for the determination of thermal diffusion length. In general, those based on one-group diffusion theory are subject to the assumption of a particular source boundary condition. Errors introduced by the assumption of such boundary conditions usually result in incorrect prediction of the relative harmonic content of the thermal flux at different elevations in the pile. The effect of these errors on diffusion-length determination is to cause inconsistency in the results as additional data points taken close to the source are included. A method is presented whereby the constants Amn in the one-group thermal-flux equation are determined experimentally and used in the determination of diffusion length. This method is then compared with other methods using one-group and age-diffusion theory with respect to the consistency of results obtained.
