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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.
Mildred J. Bradley, Jerry H. Goode, Leslie M. Ferris, James R. Flanary and Jacob W. Ullmann
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 21 | Number 2 | February 1965 | Pages 159-164
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE65-A21039
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Reactor irradiation of uranium monocarbide (UC) caused pronounced effects on its reactions with water and with aqueous solutions of NaOH, HCl, and H2SO4. Specimens irradiated to a burnup of 0.6 at.% or higher were essentially inert to water and to 6 M NaOH at 80°C. When the burnup was 0.06 at.% the specimens hydrolyzed, but the rates were much lower than those obtained with unirradiated specimens. The irradiation had little effect on the rates of reaction with HCl and H2SO4. When hydrolysis of irradiated UC occurred in water, 6 M NaOH, 6 M HCl, or 6 M H2SO4, the gases evolved contained less methane, less total volatile hydrocarbons and more hydrogen than the gases evolved from unirradiated UC under the same conditions. In general, with increasing burnup of the UC, the amount of hydrogen evolved increased while the amounts of methane and total carbon recovered in the gas decreased.