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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.
Farhang Sefidvash
Nuclear Technology | Volume 71 | Number 3 | December 1985 | Pages 527-534
Technical Paper | Fission Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT85-A33675
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new nuclear reactor design based on the fluidized bed concept is proposed. A current design utilizes spherical fuel of slightly enriched Zircaloy-clad uranium dioxide fluidized by light water under pressure. The reactor is modular in system; therefore, any size reactor can be constructed from the basic standard module. The reactor physics calculations show that reactivity increases with porosity to a maximum value and thereafter decreases. This produces inherent safety and eliminates the need for control rods and burnable poisons. The heat transfer calculations show that the maximum power extracted from the reactor core is not limited to the material temperature limits but to the maximum mass flow of coolant, which corresponds to the desired operating porosity. Design simplicity and inherent safety make it an attractive small reactor design.