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.
W. Reed Johnson, Daniel H. Risher, James E. Rogers, William L. Thompson
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 43 | Number 1 | January 1971 | Pages 32-41
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE71-A21243
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Well-collimated beams of thermal-neutron-capture gamma rays from titanium and nickel, having average energies of about 6 and 8 MeV, respectively, were used to measure narrow-beam and total gamma-ray dose attenuation. Slab shields of lead, iron, and concrete were investigated for normal and oblique beam incidence. Total dose measurements were made by traversing an exposure-responsive detector through a plane behind and parallel to the shield. Monte Carlo and moments-method calculations were used to compare analytical and experimental total dose results. Good agreement was found for iron and concrete shields, but experimental results for the lead shield were higher than those predicted by the moments method by a factor of ∼1.2 for 6 MeV and ∼1.5 for 8 MeV. The reason for this disagreement is believed to be primarily bremsstrah-lung produced by energetic secondary electrons slowing down in lead.
