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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.
Victor Teschendorff, Adly Barsoum Wahba
Nuclear Technology | Volume 31 | Number 3 | December 1976 | Pages 297-305
Technical Paper | Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT76-A31666
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Thermal interaction between molten fuel and coolant plays an important role in nuclear reactor safety. A molten fuel-coolant interaction model for water was developed and tested by calculating the propagation of pressure waves observed in some of the in-pile SPERT experiments. Pressure buildup in the interaction zone results from a high heat flux to the coolant, assuming direct contact for the initial phase. Both interaction and acceleration zones are modeled by the same set of equations that accounts for compressibility and inertia of the coolant. Phase changes of the water are controlled by a finite mass transfer rate. Calculations with this one-dimensional model BLAFCI show that particle size distribution and fragmentation time are the most sensitive parameters. Calculated peak pressures and some of the pressure time curves up to 10 msec agree well with the experimental data.
