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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.
David L. Chapin, William G. Price, Jr.
Nuclear Technology | Volume 31 | Number 1 | October 1976 | Pages 32-47
Technical Paper | Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT76-A31696
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Since the tokamak scheme of plasma confinement provides a toroidal source of fusion neutrons,wide variations in the source distribution at the wall surface are possible. A numerical solution of the neutron streaming equation has been applied to the calculation of the flux and current as functions of wall position for a circular crosssection tokamak and two noncircular tokamaks, the Princeton Reference Design (PRD) and the University of Wisconsin UWMAK-I. The results show significant variations in the pattern of the angular flux and substantial peaking in the scalar flux and current. For example, the current peaks at 22% above nominal for the circular case, 43% for the PRD, and 12% for UWMAK-I. The nominal value, total source ÷ total area, is the commonly stated “wall load.” Effects of this magnitude cannot be ignored in future reactor designs when power densities, damage rates, etc., are evaluated.
