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.
Om Pal Singh, P. Bhaskar Rao
Nuclear Technology | Volume 71 | Number 2 | November 1985 | Pages 411-416
Technical Paper | Nuclear Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT85-A33693
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The core disruptive accident (CDA) analysis of liquid-metal fast breeder reactors is often performed using the saturated vapor pressure equation of state for the fuel. However, during the transient heating of the fuel in a voided core in the disassembly phase of CDAs, the fuel vapor pressure buildup may lag behind the temperature rise and thus may lead to the delayed disassembly of the core and the consequent large energy release. The formulations for such transient vapor pressure buildup and the results on the dynamics of fuel vapor pressure during the transient heating and its influence on the thermal energy release in a CDA are presented. The energy release calculations have been performed by incorporating the present formalism in the disassembly analysis code VENUS-II. In view of the uncertainties in some of the physical parameters, a parametric study was conducted to evaluate the effects of such uncertainties in their values on the results. These results are discussed in detail.
