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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.
H. Jochem Rütten, Eberhard Teuchert
Nuclear Technology | Volume 31 | Number 2 | November 1976 | Pages 164-171
Technical Paper | Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT76-A31679
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A favorable distribution of the fuel temperature in combination with a high cooling gas outlet temperature as necessary for a helium-turbine power plant can be achieved in a pebble-bed reactor with “once-through-then-out” fueling without leaving the scope of present feasibility. The equilibrium cycle is reached after a well-balanced and short running-in period. For non-base-load operation, the reactor can be controlled by moving the control rods in the upper void above the pebble bed. Withdrawing the rods causes an increase of the maximum fuel temperature by only 56°C. To avoid replacing of the side reflector during a time of 30 yr, the fast-neutron flux in the reflector can be remarkably lowered by inserting a certain amount of neutron poison into the reflector graphite and by an outer ring of “breeding” fuel elements, respectively.
